


The Seasons of My Love

by noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Jon and the Starks Are Not Related, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-02-23 08:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13186086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth/pseuds/noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth
Summary: Months after Ned and Robb are murdered, Sansa returns to Hogwarts for her final year of school. Far from home, she finds she must rely on family friend Jon Snow, now an Auror, to help keep her family together -- and perhaps to help solve the mystery of her father and brother's deaths.A Harry Potter AU.





	1. September

On the train that September 1, no one quite knows what to say to her. Everybody’s lost _someone_ — it’s not been so many years since the war that they’ve forgotten — but to lose her father and her brother in the span of one summer feels particularly unlucky. It feels like a remnant of a different time.

Margaery, at least, comes to find her, hugging her tight and inviting her to join her in the compartment she shares with her brother Loras and his boyfriend Renly, but Sansa declines. Joffrey doesn’t exactly run in that circle, but she’d rather not risk it. And in some strange way, she does not mind the silence or the solitude. Margaery’s unfailing kindness, her bright laughter and Slytherin-sly smiles, they almost hurt after a summer spent feeling nothing but sorrow.

Anyway, she’s not completely alone. Bran is with her — though he may as well be back home at Winterfell for all he says to her. She watches him watch the scenery blur past the window; she wonders if he is really seeing anything at all. She misses him, the bright little boy he’d been only months ago, all gentleness and warm laughter.

Father’s death was a blow to them all, but Bran had weathered it, better even than Sansa or Arya had. Bran, barely thirteen and wanting to be strong for his family, for Rickon especially, who was so little. But then Robb died too, and Bran went numb. While Arya raged and Mother screamed and Sansa wept, while Rickon threw tantrums and the dogs went wild, Bran did nothing. He simply stopped.

Maybe it’s protective. Maybe he can’t feel it yet or it will destroy him, the way it’s destroyed everyone else. Sansa certainly wishes she could turn it off: the sadness, bottomless in a way she hadn’t known sadness could be, and her sinking deeper and deeper every day. She wishes that when she closed her eyes, she didn’t still see her father’s body crumpled at the gates outside Gringotts Bank, struck down by the Killing Curse while he spent a summer day in town with his daughters. Sansa wishes she couldn’t still hear her own scream, or feel the press of bodies as the street erupted into chaos — danger after so much peace — and then Professor Baelish, ushering her into a quiet alcove and letting her sob on his shoulder.

Arya disappeared for four days after that, and no one knew if she’d run away or if she was dead too. Mother nearly went mad with terror, but then one evening Jon Snow dragged Arya home, dirty and sullen but alive, and Sansa couldn’t even be angry with her, she looked so small and wrecked. Sansa noticed that Catelyn didn’t thank Jon, merely snatched Arya away from him, but Robb threw his arms around his friend. “Thank you, Snow.”

“It was the only thing I could … ” Jon choked a little, and Sansa remembers now that she’d felt a flicker of irritation. Ned Stark had raised Jon, it was true, after Jon’s mother’s death in the last war, but he was _not_ Jon’s father.

And when Jon turned up one day in August with Robb’s cloak in his hands, she’d hated him. She was the one who answered the door, and she knew at once, even before he said, “I don’t know how it happened, Sansa.” He sounded like he was pleading. “I don’t know. It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous.”

“You’re Aurors,” she’d snapped. Jon looked stricken, his face white. “Of course it’s bloody dangerous.” 

She’s ashamed now, how she swayed on her feet. Even after Father, she wasn’t strong enough. Not for this.

 _Robb._ He was her first memory, her beloved brother. When he left for Hogwarts, she’d cried for days, and when, three years later, she joined him at school, he was the only thing that helped to ease the homesickness that overwhelmed her.

She wished that Jon would take it all back, tell her he was lying, but she knew better. Life is not a song, someone once told her, and she knew it to be true. Life’s not a song, there are no happy endings — and Jon Snow does not lie. So instead she tore the cloak from his hands, hissing _That’s ours_ , but Jon didn’t resist; he let the cloak slip through his fingers and into her arms. He said her name, very softly.

When the first sob escaped her, her knees gave out and Jon pulled her into his chest, murmuring soothing sounds in her hair. She kept the cloak balled in her arms; it was thick, good-quality, like her father’s sleeve had felt when she’d clung desperately to it as he lay unmoving on the cobblestones of Diagon Alley. 

She can’t remember the last time Jon touched her — not since they were small children, certainly — but she will never forget that embrace, so terrible and so necessary. Even as she stood there hating him, hating that Robb was dead and Jon Snow was here, he held her until she no longer shook.

Jon told the rest of the family, but Sansa told her mother. She wouldn’t have wanted to hear it from him.

* * *

At lunchtime Sansa cajoles Bran into eating a spinach pie and a chocolate frog. “Thank you, Sansa,” he says, not really looking at her.

Arya vanished the moment she set foot on the Hogwarts Express, gone in search of her friends in Gryffindor, that boy with black hair, and the fat one, and Professor Tarth’s nephew Podrick. She hadn’t even spared a glance for her siblings and felt no qualms, it seems, leaving Bran’s care in Sansa’s hands. In all honesty, it’s probably for the best. Sansa and Arya, never the best of friends, have been at each other’s throats since Father died, Arya full of loud fury and certain that no one can understand how she’s suffering, and Sansa, well, after all the weeping she thinks she doesn’t have any tears left, and the best she knows how to do now is pretend that things are normal. Pretend that she is fine. For her mother, at least, who has aged a decade in a matter of months.

So Sansa sits in silence beside her brother, staring with heavy eyes at the book she’s laid open in her lap. Every so often she remembers to turn a page.

She must fall asleep eventually, because she startles awake at the sound of her compartment door slamming open.

“My dear Sansa,” sneers a voice she has come to loathe. “And her cripple brother.”

“Joffrey.” 

She sounds steadier than she feels, but Joffrey only smirks. She should’ve known he’d come looking for her. He’s never been one to pass up gloating over someone else’s misery.

She hates his ugly wormlips, his golden hair, his cruel eyes. She can’t believe she ever cared for him, but she’d been more naive back then, and he’d been better at pretending he had a heart. That was before he killed Lady, before he split Sansa’s lip. Starting their fourth year, he even used the Cruciatus Curse on her, for which they could expel him, even arrest him, but of course she couldn’t tell anyone. They would only wonder why she let him do it. They would only call her a stupid girl. Joffrey’s father had been the Minister of Magic, for Merlin’s sake, and his uncle Tyrion was Sansa’s own Head of House. Joffrey's mother, a Lannister, had no formal role in the government then, but she scared Sansa more than any of them. Joffrey was the son of the two most powerful families in the Ministry, maybe in the whole British wizarding world, and Sansa wouldn’t risk her father’s job as Head Auror by angering them. She wouldn’t let anyone else suffer for her own bad choices.

In the end it was Margaery who saw something was wrong and helped her get out. It didn’t matter to her that Joffrey was Margaery’s fellow prefect, or that Sansa wouldn’t tell her any of the details. It didn’t matter that she and Sansa weren’t even friends then, not really. They’d crossed paths in classes, and chatted amiably when Joffrey took Sansa back to the Slytherin common room with him, but that was it, until one day Margaery caught Sansa crying in the bathroom between classes and saw straight through Sansa’s well-rehearsed lies.

Sansa’s not sure how it was all managed. Margaery talked to her grandmother, who’s on the school’s board of governors, and then Olenna Tyrell must’ve spoken to someone at Hogwarts, because Petyr Baelish, Head of Slytherin, called Sansa into his office one evening after dinner. She knew him, a little, because he taught Transfiguration and he’d been her mother’s friend when they were at Hogwarts together, but this was her first time alone with him, and she didn't relish the thought of talking about Joffrey. But his kindness calmed her, as he spoke fondly of her mother and even offered her a cup of wine. Finally he told her that Joffrey had been dealt with. “Mr. Baratheon is well-aware that it will be best if he keeps his distance from you, or there will be consequences.”

“Consequences?” The cup in her hand shook.

“I can’t expel him, I’m afraid.” He patted her knee consolingly, his voice raspy and sympathetic. “Cersei Lannister is not a woman whose enmity I aspire to earn. But I’ve spoken with Professor Lannister and he’s sworn to keep an eye on his nephew. From what I understand he’s never much liked the boy, so he was more than willing to step in. And Joffrey now understands that Olenna Tyrell has taken a particular interest in you, and it would not do to anger her. I know he doesn’t care about alienating the Tyrells, but I do not believe his mother is so foolish, not if she truly wants to be Minister, and I know his grandfather is not. Yes,” he said confidently, “Tywin Lannister will rein Joffrey in should the need arise. All you need to do is say the word.”

But Cersei Lannister has been Minister of Magic for more than a year now, and they say her pride grows with every passing day. And Tywin Lannister died last spring. 

There is nothing left to hold him back, so here is Joffrey, come to laugh at her pain. 

She won’t give it to him.

“The Starks really are coming down in the world,” he says, and she betrays no expression, though she feels her knees trembling beneath the book that is still open on her lap. Her wand is within reach, if she needs it. Joffrey’s always had a quick draw, but when she can keep her head on straight she’s by far the better spellcaster. She doesn’t have to be afraid of him.

“Ned Stark was an incompetent oaf, so it’s no surprise he died like he did. I wish I’d been there that day.” His smile sharpens. “I can just picture it. Your coward father laid flat with his face in the dirt. You screaming your lungs out — oh, I’d know that sound anywhere.”

Her voice barely shakes. “Get out.”

Rage flashes in his eyes, but he doesn’t pull his wand and he doesn’t lift a hand.

“ _Get_ _out_ ,” she says. “You’re a monster.”

With effort, he smirks, pretending at a casualness that her long practice in reading Joffrey allows her to see through instantly. “Oh, Sansa. If I had been there, I wouldn’t have let anyone drag you away. I would’ve made you look at him, just a slab of meat on the ground. I would’ve made you give him a goodbye kiss.” He laughs, and laughs harder when he sees her shudder.

“As for your brother,” Joffrey continues, and she could kill him, she could, if only she could make herself move. “He was even stupider than your father. My mother told me all about how he died. Did they let you see the body before they buried him? Or were you just left to imagine it, the way they transfigured his head just to taunt him before they blasted it from his shoulders?” Sansa’s stomach lurches dangerously, bile rising through her throat. “Did you think he looked handsome when you saw him? Did you even notice the difference? A wolf’s head — it’s fitting. I always thought Robb Stark was a mangy dog anyway.”

 _If he wants to see a wolf_ , Sansa thinks, and she’s finally got her fingers on her wand, _I’ll show him a wolf. I’ll tear his throat out._

Before she can utter a syllable, however, there’s movement beside her: Bran, with one almost careless wave of his hand, sends Joffrey flying out of the compartment, the door slamming shut behind him. A moment passes and Sansa holds her breath — then, the door rattles on its hinges, Joffrey shouting obscenities and banging his fists against the door so hard it makes her flinch. Hours seem to pass before the hall grows silent once more.

“He must’ve gotten bored,” Bran says finally.

Sansa slowly turns to meet her brother’s eyes. He’s impassive, at first. Then he nods, a not-quite smile twitching at his lips.

 _Merlin_. Her brother is powerful, everyone knows this, one of the strongest wizards the Stark family has ever seen — and the Starks have a long history of powerful magic. But he is only in his third year and already performing wandless magic. Her heart nearly bursts with pride and amazement. 

“Bran,” she says. “That was ... ”

“I don’t like to hear him talk to you like that,” he says. His cheeks flush pinkish, and Sansa thinks it might be the most emotion she’s seen from him in months. “Father wouldn’t like it. Neither would Robb. They wouldn’t like me letting him get away with it.”

Hurriedly, Sansa wipes the tears from her eyes. “You don’t have to protect me,” she manages to get out in a somewhat firm tone. She’s the big sister, she wills him to understand; she is of age now, in her final year at Hogwarts, and she is supposed to protect him. However powerful Bran may be, antagonizing Joffrey will only put a target on his back — and even if Joffrey can’t hurt Bran with magic, he’s shown no qualms about fighting dirty. Besides that, the Lannisters have reach far beyond the halls of Hogwarts or the Ministry. Sansa will not allow Bran’s future to be curtailed just because Joffrey knows how to get a rise out of her. Sansa will never let a Lannister touch a hair on her baby brother’s head. 

Still, she can’t help but hug him and plant a kiss on his cheek. “But thank you for trying.”

* * *

That night, as Sansa settles into her dormitory, unpacking her trunk and hanging her decorations, she lingers over a photograph. It’s Christmas, two years ago. The whole family stands crowded together in front of Winterfell, bundled up in heavy coats and scarves. Her mother and father wrap their arms around each other, Catelyn’s smile a soft, serene thing, and Ned’s shining more in his eyes more than on his lips. Robb has the cocky swagger of a handsome eighteen year old who knows that he’s handsome; he slings an arm around Rickon, who’d just had his first growth spurt, and every now and then he waves and laughs and Sansa’s heart will throb like a wound. Bran, at Sansa’s side, keeps levitating snowballs to hurl at Robb, even though he certainly knew that he was not allowed to do magic outside of Hogwarts. His hair was still long then, nearly to his collar. At thirteen Arya hated having pictures of herself taken, and in every photograph from that entire year she pulls a series of ridiculous faces that make her almost unrecognizable. As Sansa watches, she sticks her tongue out and covers her eyes with her hands. Sansa surprises herself by missing this Arya, the one who had no time for Sansa’s foolishness but whose happiness came as easily and as certainly as the rising sun.

Jon’s there too, of course, sulky and subdued, wedged in between Arya and Father. He keeps glancing down and then up again, nervously brushing the black curls out of his eyes. Sansa remembers that it wasn’t long after this photograph was taken that he and Robb completed their training to become Aurors, and Jon began tying his hair back, away from his face. 

It’s strange to realize how familiar he is. He isn’t family, not really, and yet — she’s known his face almost her whole life. He’s always been there, Robb’s shadow, Arya’s favorite, and Sansa can’t think when she ever really looked at him, but she thinks she could paint him from memory if she tried: his dark eyes, thoughtful and sad, and the scar that runs across the left one, and the full lips of his serious mouth.

She draws her finger across his face, touches his furrowed brow, and then, shaking herself, pulls away. What is she _doing_?

She stares at the picture a moment longer and then packs it away again. Seeing it every day would only make her sad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on Sorting: I know this can be kind of contentious, but I gave it a lot of thought (probably too much) and tried to Sort based on how these characters would've been at 11 years old. So, for instance, while I think Sansa in canon has developed many Slytherin traits, especially under the tutelage of several Slytherins (Petyr Baelish, Cersei Lannister, Margaery Tyrell), Sansa at 11 was much more of a Ravenclaw: rather than being cunning and willing to do what it takes to survive, Sansa was romantic, intelligent, and imaginative; she wasn't particularly ambitious for the sake of power itself (even the idea of being queen was initially more of a romantic fantasy than a desire or an aptitude to rule people). So it seems likely to me that she would've been Sorted into Ravenclaw. Anyway, I'll probably post something up at my tumblr @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth with a full list of my Sortings for this fic, but I definitely thought them all through.


	2. October

Six weeks into term, two owls swoop down to drop mail on Sansa’s breakfast. She recognizes them both. The first owl, slow-moving and speckled brown, belongs to her mother and nips at her fingers until she gives her a treat. “All right, Tansy,” she says, shooing the old thing, “off now.” The envelope she leaves behind is fat; if it really is from Mother, it will be the longest response Sansa has received since term began. That ought to be heartening, but it makes her nervous too. It isn’t right that Mother should be all alone except for Rickon, just because she and Arya and Bran must go to school, but Mother had absolutely forbidden Sansa to even speak of leaving school, and even brave Arya didn’t dare broach the topic more than once. Sansa writes as often as she can, but she’s not stupid enough to think whatever words she thinks to scribble down will make up for the absence of Robb and her father.

When she opens the envelope, however, she sees that the handwriting looks nothing like her mother’s thin, elegant script. No, this is the shaky hand of a young boy, the letters awkward and overly large, some of the words misspelled. It is from Rickon, and addressed to _Dear Sansa!!!_ She reads the first paragraph:

_I wish I was at Hogwarts with you and Arya and Bran. It's not fair you all went away. I am so BORED and Mum is sad all the time and even when Jon comes over she's still sad. I know Mum misses Dad and Robb and I do too and Jon too. When do you come home? Jon says not for WEEKS AND WEEKS but I wish you were here now._

The letter continues on for another page of rambling and pleas; the rest of the envelope is filled with Rickon’s drawings, ugly scrawls of color that she holds to her chest. Several drawings feature a figure with bright red hair. It might be her or her mother, but it makes Sansa want to cry all the same.

The second owl arrives just as Sansa stands to leave, and this one too she knows on sight: snow white and enormous, a beast called Longclaw. Robb gave him to Jon for his birthday one year, a huge white owl to match Jon’s huge white dog, Ghost. Jon had seemed embarrassed to accept the owl, but from the moment the bird first perched on his shoulder, Jon loved him, and even Ghost seemed won over by Longclaw, perhaps sensing in him a kindred spirit.

In the years since Robb and Jon left Hogwarts, Sansa has seen Longclaw in the Great Hall every now and then, usually dropping off some present or message for Arya, who fawned over the owl and fed it scraps from her own plate. Longclaw has never come for her.

But here he is, dropping a slim letter beside Sansa’s nearly-empty plate — a letter that is unmistakably labeled with her name and no one else’s.

Her blood roars in her ears. The last time Jon gave her news … 

She carries the envelope with her to the nearest bathroom and tears it open with shaking hands.

_Dear Sansa,_

_I hope this letter finds you well, and that your studies are going all right. I know NEWTs can be rough even in the best of times and ~~I know that this isn’t~~ I am rooting for you. As promised, I’ve been keeping Rickon company as much as I can and have been staying in my old room. ~~The flat isn’t the same anyway~~ Rickon is all right — he misses you all, but he likes having the run of the grounds and I usually catch him chasing the dogs around, or them chasing him around, but either way they all end up covered in mud._

_I don’t know what you have heard from your mother but she is as she was. Rickon goes up to see her every morning and some days we have crossed paths in the kitchen when she’s come down for more tea, but I try not to get in the way. ~~She still~~ Sometimes she asks about Robb and Ned’s cases and I would tell her everything I knew if I knew anything._

_~~Sansa, I~~ _

~~__~~ _I don’t expect either of you to forgive me. Please know that. I only wanted to write to tell you that I am doing what I can for your family. It doesn’t make up for anything but I don’t want Rickon or your mother to be all alone in this. I’m trying. Am I doing the right thing?_

_If you are able to come home for a visit before the Christmas holiday, I think your mother would like it very much. She misses you. I mean she misses all of you, of course, but also you specifically. I can tell. ~~You’re~~_

_No need to write back, I only wanted to let you know how things are here. Good luck with your classes._

_Yours,  
Jon_

She reads it over three times, but she can hardly make sense of it. Why would he write her to talk about Rickon and her mother? Why wouldn’t he just tell Arya and have her pass along the information if he thought Sansa ought to know? She’s grateful, of course, because Mother’s letters are usually little more than a sentence or two, and Rickon, though not a liar, is an imaginative little boy and far from a reliable source, but that still doesn’t explain _why her_.

Stranger still, the letter sounds nothing like Jon: stiff, overly formal, full of hesitations and mistakes. Jon may be quiet and, at times, awkward, but he’s gained confidence in recent years, walks taller, trusts himself more. But does not trust himself enough to write to her without second guessing every other sentence.

Looking the letter over once more, a phrase catches her eye: _As promised, I've been keeping Rickon company_. As promised.

A few days before Sansa returned to Hogwarts, Jon found her leaning up against a weirwood tree, with Rickon asleep across her lap. “I’m sorry,” he said when she saw him approach, a dark shape silhouetted against a setting sun. “Arya sent me looking for Rickon, I didn’t realize — ”

“He threw another fit and tired himself out,” Sansa said, stroking her fingers through his hair. “He wants his father and his brother. He needs Mother, but ... ” She shook her head, refusing to speak a disloyal word against her mother. “He looks so much like Robb.”

She couldn’t see what expression Jon wore, but he was silent for what felt like a long time. They remained still, all three of them, breathing in and breathing out the scent of the trees and the land and the crisp northern air. Finally Jon said, “I think so too.”

“I can’t just leave him,” Sansa confessed. “I don’t even know if he understands what’s happening, but I know he’ll hate me for leaving him alone. After everything — ”

“He won’t be alone. Your mother will be here.” 

Even as he said it, Sansa could hear the uncertainty in his voice, that waver that told her that he knew as well as she did that Catelyn would not be of much practical use to Rickon, not half-alive as she was, still rattling with the shock of all that she'd lost.

Clearing his throat, Jon added, “And I’ll be here.”

Sansa twisted one of Rickon’s auburn curls around and around her finger. “You live in London,” she said. “Your job is in London. Your life is in London. I know you’ll come by now and again, but I can’t expect — ”

“I already Apparate to work. Doesn’t matter if I do it from my flat in London or the Highlands.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do. He’s family. I won’t disappear on him. I promise.”

Sansa had shielded her eyes against the sun to see Jon better, but he was already turning away, eyes cast back toward Winterfell. 

She’s hardly thought of it since then, and at the moment she had not quite realized that Jon really meant _promise_. She supposes she’d thought he’d try, he would, because he’s Jon, kind and honest Jon, but his life in London would eventually call him back. Even without Robb, Jon has other friends, coworkers. Last Sansa knew he even had a Muggle girlfriend with ginger hair and a pretty name, and, according to Robb, a sense of humor so dirty it almost made _him_ blush, let alone Jon.

That had been Sansa’s sixteenth birthday, just a year back, when Robb brought Sansa with him to the pub and let her share some of his firewhisky, and as the night wore on he grew looser and louder and he told her stories of all the mischief he’d been getting up to in London with Theon, and all the things he’d been trying to convince Jon to get up to. He’d been seeing a girl called Jeyne on and off, but Sansa didn’t think from his tone of voice that it was especially serious. (She’d come to the funeral though, a meek brunette who cried silently and offered a few gentle words of condolence.) Robb couldn’t tell her much about work, only said that it kept him on his toes, and she’d laughed and been proud, proud of her Auror brother and stupid enough to think he was safe.

She wishes she could go back to that moment. She can't remember the last time she was that happy.

In the evening, once classes are through, Sansa writes two careful replies and takes them both to the owlery after dinner. Arya must've been following her: she corners her on her way back down, her arms crossed, her eyebrow raised. “What is Jon writing to you for?”

Sansa’s cheeks burn. “Nothing that concerns you.”

“You don’t even like Jon,” Arya hisses. “What did he say?”

Sansa pushes past her sister. “It doesn’t concern you,” she says again, hurrying down the stairs and making her way to Ravenclaw Tower without looking back.

* * *

_Jon —_

_Thank you for writing. And for keeping your promise._

_There’s nothing to forgive._

_— Sansa_


	3. November

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the updated warnings - Joffrey gets worse (though it's only a brief part of this chapter). Nothing graphically violent or explicit, but he's deeply unpleasant.

It’s the day after Halloween when Sansa asks permission to go home for a few days. Professor Lannister is more than understanding: he doesn’t hesitate to grant her request, only tells her to collect any work she’ll miss from her professors, and to give her mother his best.

She won’t, of course, but she says, “Yes, sir,” and smiles brightly.

Before she can escape his office, however, he clears his throat. “Wait a moment, Miss Stark.” She goes tense, her heart starting to speed up. “Last night, my nephew … ”

She does her best to appear unperturbed, to wear the mask of the polite, pleasant, stupid girl she wishes she could still be. “Please, Professor. It was nothing.”

“Was it?”

It wasn’t, and they both know it, but Sansa won’t admit it. There’s no point, and it’d just be humiliating — telling him how she’d been slipping away from the feast last night when at her back she’d heard Joffrey calling, “There you are,” and turned to find him standing there, his mouth shaped like a smile. Telling the professor about how she hadn’t been fooled, but she hadn’t run either.

Everyone had been inside the Great Hall, gorging chocolate cake and baked apples, downing goblet after goblet of pumpkin juice, some of them undoubtedly spiked with something stronger. Students and faculty alike gossiped, laughed, pointed at the dark shadows of bats that swept back and forth across the starlit ceiling. Some of the older students enlisted the ghosts to help frighten the firsties, and from the Gryffindor table could be heard the continuous roar of cheers that meant someone had gotten up to something foolish.

But Sansa’s head ached, and she was too tired to pretend at happiness, so she’d excused herself, and Joffrey had found her. Again.

Since the incident on the train, he hadn’t said a word to Sansa, had barely looked her way, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d forgotten about her. He must’ve distracted himself with other things, other toys, but this moment was always coming — no Bran to protect her, no Margaery. No Robb. Just her and Joffrey, as she knew it would be.

Before she even thought to draw her wand, he’d crowded her up against the cold wall until the back of her skull thunked against stone. 

Joffrey put the tip of his wand to the underside of her jaw. “You insolent bitch.” His breath at her ear made her go rigid, as frozen as if she’d been Petrified.

When he pressed his lips to hers, they were cold and dry, a claim more than a kiss. But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t feel anything.

He dug his wand deeper into the soft skin beneath her jaw, pushing it up against the bone, and kept smiling his hollow smile. “Don’t forget you’re mine,” he said, twisting his wrist.

Later, she thought about all the things she could’ve done. Maybe she couldn’t have send him flying with nothing but her thoughts, nor did she think she could take a cue from Arya and simply punch him in the face. But she could’ve shoved a knee between his legs. She could’ve pushed him away. She could’ve screamed, at least. Someone might have come running. Someone might have heard.

But Joffrey’s taught her, hasn’t he, that it is better to go still, don’t fight, accept whatever his hands want from her. Accept whatever his hands do to her. It’s what’s kept her alive.

Joffrey’s hand was just closing around her throat when — 

_“What’s the meaning of this?”_

He stepped swiftly away, releasing Sansa and slipping his wand up his sleeve. Sansa brought her shaking figures to the base of her throat as she caught her breath. Finally she lifted her eyes.

Tyrion Lannister stood in the corridor, his wand raised and his face white with fury. “You shit,” he hissed, and there could be no doubt he was speaking to Joffrey. “I have warned you. Have you no respect — ?”

Sansa didn’t need to see Joffrey’s face to picture his sullen expression, his narrowing eyes, his tightening jaw. She’d been on the receiving end of that look enough times to know it even in her dreams. Voice very thin, Joffrey said, “Sansa and I were just having a private conversation, Uncle.”

Professor Lannister’s eyes had darted to Sansa and she’d nodded on instinct, but his mouth pinched. He didn’t believe her. “Miss Stark,” he began.

“It’s fine, sir. Joffrey and I were only talking.” She didn’t look away; she had to be convincing, convincing enough, anyway. “He was asking me to come back to the feast, but I'm afraid I'm very tired.” Then, before the professor could say another word, before Joffrey could get her alone again, she added, “So I think I’ll head back to my dormitory. Good night.”

She didn’t run, but it was a close thing.

Now, confronted with Professor Lannister’s open concern, she tries to assure him, “It was only a conversation.”

He sighs. “Tell me truly, is there anything I can do?”

“No, thank you, Professor. Joffrey is a friend. Please don’t worry about me.”

* * *

In the end neither Bran nor Arya return to Winterfell with her. Part of her hadn’t wanted to tell them she was going in the first place, but she knew keeping it from them wouldn’t be fair, not to them and not to Mother and Rickon either. But it doesn’t end up mattering: Bran has a Divination test that he says he cannot miss, and Arya’s got a Quidditch match, so when all is said and done, Sansa travels into Hogsmeade by herself on a Thursday afternoon and Floos from the Three Broomsticks to the Wintertown Inn.

Father never allowed Floo in the house — he never thought it particularly secure — and Sansa still hasn’t passed her Apparition test, so she does as Robb taught her to so many years ago, when for whatever reason their parents weren’t traveling with them. She rents a broomstick from the front desk, hitches her rucksack beneath it, and flies northward, toward the loch and the castle that sits beside it. 

Sansa is competent on a broomstick, but nothing special, like Arya and Jon are. Like Robb was. Still, the chill, damp air against her face revives her, and she knows from experience that her hair will untangle, eventually.

When Winterfell comes into view, she can’t fight off a smile. Every ancient stone is familiar to her, and the loch gleams gray with the castle’s reflection, and the sky’s. The grounds are still green, not as lush as they were in August but lovely all the same; in another month or two, all will be white and bright with snow, more magical to her than Hogwarts. Once, Sansa had dreamt of living in the kind of manor where Joffrey grew up, or Margaery, in the English countryside and built to please the eye. Winterfell, older than both Casterly Rock and Highgarden, has none of the beauty of these newer structures, and its construction is far from graceful, but it is a hardy castle, built in the days when wizarding clans and Muggle clans alike went to war for each other’s lands and titles. Joffrey, when he’d visited, had called it barbaric, and Margaery, less harshly, called it bleak; but Sansa knows there is no sight she loves more than this, her home, under the light of a gentle sun. No air smells purer or sweeter, far from the crowds of Diagon Alley or the Muggle cities.

She lands at the far end of the front path, wanting to approach on foot, with the broom, still carrying her bag, charmed to float alongside her. Before she has even made it halfway to the castle, however, the gate flies open and Rickon races down to the path to meet her. “Sansa!” he cries, throwing his arms around her and pressing his cheek to her stomach, careless of the rough material of her travel cloak. “You’re home!”

Her throat goes dry at the sight of him and his auburn curls. He is so like Robb. She’d almost forgotten.

“Have you gotten taller?” she asks, trying to keep her voice bright. “I think you’ve gotten taller. You’re going to outgrow me one of these days.”

“That’s what Jon says.”

“Oh? Is it?”

And when she glances toward the gate again, there he is: Jon, dressed in Muggle clothes, hands tucked into the pockets of his black trousers, shoulders shrugged up under his dark gray jumper. He does something with his mouth, not quite a smile, and then ducks his head.

Inside, he takes her bag and her broomstick, handing them both off to Old Nan, one of the family servants, and when he sees that Rickon is still clinging to her, he throws an arm around the boy’s shoulders and steers him out of Sansa’s way, allowing her to slip out of her travel cloak and comb her fingers through her wind-mussed hair. Only then, once she’s gathered herself, does he say, “Welcome home.”

“Hi, Jon.”

He is exactly as she remembered him, down to the beard he started wearing a few years ago, which, despite whatever jokes she and Jeyne Poole have made at his expense, she actually thinks rather suits him. She’s not sure it should be remarkable, that he’s the same — of course he is; it’s only been two and a half months. It’s only that she’s recently learned that two and a half months can change everything.

He is still stupidly kind too, offering her a cup of tea (“I’ve just put on a kettle”) and asking if she’s hungry, if she’d like to him to make her anything. “Old Nan was going to bring last night’s stew up to your mother for lunch, but if you don’t want that, I can make some eggs? Toast? Porridge?” She follows him into the kitchen, where she sits at the little side table with Rickon half in her lap, and wonders how it would feel to let him take care of her.

But that’s not why she’s here. She’s here for Mother. For Rickon. Not for herself, and certainly not for Jon.

“I’m all right,” she tells him. “Maybe in a bit.” She watches him retrieve two teacups from a cupboard. “I thought you drank coffee,” she says.

He ducks his head again. “I usually do, but I know you prefer tea.”

After he’s poured them each a steaming cup and she’s dashed a little sugar into hers, Rickon complains that he feels left out, so Jon pours him a little cupful, cooled with cream, and says, “Sorry ‘bout that, Rickon. Didn’t mean to exclude you. Drink up.”

Rickon slurps down some tea and looks briefly befuddled by the taste, before setting it aside, no longer interested. Sansa hides her smile. Soon Rickon decides that he would rather track down Shaggydog, and tell him — and Summer and Grey Wind and Nymeria and Ghost too — that Sansa is here. “They’ll all want to play with you,” he tells her excitedly.

Rickon is old enough to remember Lady, but Sansa never explained to him what happened to her. Not the truth, of course, and not the version she’s been telling her family for years, about an accident in the stables while she and Joffrey had their backs turned. Regardless, Rickon understands that Sansa, alone among her siblings, no longer has a dog, and he pities her for it.

“I want to play with them too, once I’ve rested up a bit,” she says, and waves Rickon off with a smile. She turns back to Jon once her brother’s out of sight. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here,” she says after a moment.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d want me to be here,” he says. “But Rickon told me you were coming, and I had a few days of vacation scheduled … ” He lowers his voice. “I can go. If you want me to.”

“No,” she says, too quickly. “No, it’s good to see you. Really. I’m glad Rickon told you I’d be home. I should’ve written to you, I feel like an ass — it was you who told me to visit. Can you forgive me?”

Jon offers her one of those half-smiles that are so quintessentially him, little more than a twitch of the lips but warmer by far than anything she’s seen on Joffrey’s face. He’s handsome, really, in a slightly-unkempt sort of way, and although it shouldn’t surprise her, it does, because as a little girl Sansa based all her ideas about handsome men on her brother, and the princes in her fairytales, and later boys like Joffrey Lannister and Harry Hardyng, boys who were bright and charming and proud. But now that she thinks on it, even when he was scrawnier and badly-dressed, Jon always had a dark, brooding attractiveness to him, like a man from the cover of one of those terrible romance novels Sansa and Jeyne read when they were twelve. But she never thought to notice, not really, because, well, he isn’t her brother, but he is — whatever he is.

Jon sets his cup down carefully, but it still sloshes it a little, leaving a wet ring at the base. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he says, and she knows he is thinking of her letter. He licks some of the spilled tea from his thumb, then gives it a little shake.

She clears her throat and looks at the clock on the wall. Almost two.

“I should go,” she says all at once. “I should speak with my mother.” When she turns back at Jon, something has shuttered in his face, the light’s gone cool. Good. She prefers it that way. She’s used to it. “I should let her know I’m home.”

After a long hesitation, he says, “I think she’ll be happy to see you.”

* * *

Sansa doesn’t know how her mother feels when she sees her, because she doesn’t know what happiness looks like for Catelyn Stark anymore. She leaves her bed and allows Sansa to embrace her, and her bony hand brushes down the length of Sansa’s hair. Maybe this is as close to happy as she can get now. 

“Sansa,” she murmurs. “My beautiful girl.”

“Mother.”

Sansa won’t cry in front of her mother, not anymore, so for a few long moments she buries her face in Catelyn’s neck and works to calm her breathing. _I can be strong_ , Sansa tells herself. _I must be strong_.

At last, she looks into at her mother, altered even further since term began. Her face is deeply lined and ashen; her hair, once so beautiful, looks dirty, and the dark auburn strands now barely outnumber the gray; worst of all, her blue eyes have gone dull, whether from grief or sleeping droughts or whatever else the Healers have prescribed her, Sansa doesn’t know, but it makes her chest ache. 

“I missed you,” Sansa says at last.

Catelyn’s brow furrows, a flicker of something passing across her face. Recognition. Realization. “You should be at school.”

“I wrote you, remember? I’ve been allowed to take a few days off. I leave Monday.” She kisses her mother’s cheek. “But I wanted to see Rickon. And you.”

“Rickon. He’s a sweet boy. He reminds me so much — ” Catelyn’s mouth clamps shut, almost of its own accord, and when Sansa reaches for her, she avoids her touch. Instead, she walks across the room to the window. “What was I saying?” 

Outside, Sansa knows, it is desolate and beautiful, the land as endless as the sky. She knows too that her mother, from England, near Oxfordshire, has never quite grown accustomed to the wilds of Scotland, but she considers it home all the same.

“Oh, yes,” Catelyn says after a moment and turns back around. “I do remember, you wrote about your visit. Tell me, how are Arya and Bran?”

“They’re good. They wanted to come too, but they couldn’t get away.”

Catelyn stares at her with glassy eyes. “Rickon,” she says suddenly. “I want to talk to you about Rickon. How does he seem to you? He’s lonely, Sansa. He spends too much time alone. With the dogs. He’s growing wild.”

“He’ll be fine, Mother.”

Shaking her head, Catelyn says, “Lysa owled me. She’s offered to let him stay with her and her boy Robin.”

Sansa bites her lip to hide her surprise. Aunt Lysa? She knew her aunt only a little, but Sansa had last spoken with her at Father’s wake, where she’d spent most of the afternoon deep in conversation with Professor Baelish, ignoring her distraught sister. When the professor caught sight of Sansa, he’d gestured her over, and said to Lysa, “Doesn’t she look just like Cat did at her age?” and Lysa, grabbing Sansa by the chin, had said, “Yes. Too much like her, if you ask me,” before turning back to Professor Baelish with an almost _flirtatious_ smile. Sansa had wanted to scream at her, reminder her that this was her father’s funeral, but she was a good girl, a polite girl, so simply she bade them both goodbye and slipped through the crowd to find Robb.

Sansa had only met her cousin Robin once, and he’d been a sickly, petulant boy, not without sweetness, but she could hardly imagine a child more different than Rickon.

The thought of sending Rickon to them — it’s impossible. It would break him. As sure as Sansa knows anything, she knows that.

“That was kind of Aunt Lysa,” says Sansa, very carefully, once she gathered her thoughts. “But I think Rickon wouldn’t like it. And then who would be here with you?”

“He shouldn’t be alone so much.”

“I know,” Sansa says, “but Jon is here.” 

In the next breath, she wishes it unsaid. But it’s too late: the damage is done.

“Jon Snow,” says her mother, the lines around her mouth furrowing deeper as her lips thin into a scowl. She crosses back to Sansa and lays one freezing hand on her cheek. “He has no place here. He’s killed one of my children already.”

Sansa sighs. What can she say? She thought the same thing, once, when she thought it might be easier if she had someone to blame. But she knows now: their family wouldn’t have survived any of this, without Jon. He brought Arya back, and he kept her here. He took care of Rickon. He did not let Sansa carry everything on her own.

“Mother,” she says, grabbing Catelyn’s hand and squeezing it between her own. “Jon was Robb’s partner. He tried to save him. You know he didn’t kill Robb.”

Catelyn’s voice is unyielding. “He may not have intended to do it, but that boy’s blood is cursed. I told your father.”

“You’re not making any sense.” She tries to make her mother see the truth in her eyes, Tully blue and the very mirror of Catelyn’s; she tries to make her hear it in her voice. “I know you don’t care for Jon,” she says, soft but firm, “but it’s important for Rickon that he’s around. He’s not cursed, he’s just — he’s just Jon.”

But Catelyn just shakes her head and steps out of Sansa’s reach.

The coldness in her mother’s gaze tears at her. This is a betrayal. Sansa has always, _always_ chosen her mother over Jon, even when Sansa could make no excuses for Catelyn’s behavior toward him — never deliberately cruel, at least not before this summer, but distant and pointedly civil and never warm, never the woman Sansa knew her to be. It made no real difference to Sansa then, keeping Jon at a remove, at the periphery even as her siblings’ held him close (sometimes, she knew, closer than they held her), and it made her mother happy. 

But now she’s taken his side. 

How could she? Jon is a grown man, an Auror; he can handle Catelyn Stark’s unkindness. But another heartbreak might shatter Sansa’s mother.

Yet she cannot pretend that hates Jon, not even for her mother’s sake.

Sansa bows her head, shamed. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I love you.”

A few moments pass before Catelyn says, “I won’t lose anyone else.” Her dull eyes have begun to blaze. “I won’t allow it.”

Shaken, Sansa kisses her mother’s cheek once more and hurries from the room, her jaw clenched tight to hold back the sob that is pushing its way out of her throat.

* * *

Time passes with a quickness that Sansa is not accustomed to. At Hogwarts — in classes, staring at her notes, extracting a few words of conversation from Bran, even sitting at Margaery’s side, laughing because everyone else is laughing — the days drag on, endless and unvarying, and Sansa sometimes cannot say for certain if she is asleep or awake, except that in her dreams she sees her father and Robb, and in waking life there is only Arya’s scowl, Bran’s indifference, the disdain of the classmates who once liked her but now find her cold, aloof, pitiable.

At Winterfell, time races through Sansa, not simply past her. She feels every moment.

The evening she arrives, Rickon drags her by the hand out to the loch, showing her how he’s learned to skip stones across its surface. (She can’t get the trick of it, but when she helps her stone along with a flick of her wand, Rickon calls her a cheater.) She plays fetch with the dogs, tossing a knot of rope as hard as she can and watching them scramble over each other for it, and later, when Nymeria tackles her into the rain-damp earth, Sansa tries to be a good sport. Ghost trots over to her and watches her warily with his red eyes, as if checking that she’s all right, and then Jon appears in Sansa’s line of sight, reaching a hand down to help her up. When she’s on two feet again, he appraises her. “You’ve got a little … ” He gestures vaguely toward her, and after letting Sansa swipe blindly at her face with the back of her hand a few times, he lifts his fingers to her forehead and brushes away a bit of dirt.

“Thanks,” she says, but he’s already walking away.

In the morning, she has breakfast with her mother, as she often did before school started. Catelyn likes to sit in a small parlor just off her bedroom, a warm room with a bleak view to the north, and she often stays there for hours, drinking cup after cup of black coffee that Old Nan brings her and refusing to touch the fruit or the bread. Still, she engages enough to ask about classes and schoolwork, and Sansa tries to tell her what she can about Arya and Bran, all that is both true and untroubling. Sansa doesn’t bring up Jon again. 

Her days she spends with Rickon, and with Jon. They eat lunch together, cold sandwiches that Jon assembles in the kitchen while Sansa slices apples and cheese to serve as a side, and though Sansa must shut herself away for a few hours each day to work on homework, and though she guilts Rickon into keeping Catelyn company in the afternoon, if she’ll let him, and though Jon — well, Sansa doesn’t know what Jon does with his time, but she has spotted him in the library on more than one occasion — but either way, they all come together again for dinner. They cook for themselves, and Rickon cheers any variation from Old Nan’s cuisine. Nan’s a fair cook who’s been keeping the Starks fed and healthy all their lives, but Sansa cooks with too much butter and cream and doesn’t make Rickon eat as many vegetables as he ought to, so her cooking has long been a favorite with her little brother. 

And then, just like that, Sunday night has arrived, the final night of her visit. They’ve had dinner already and are crowded around the fireplace in the sitting room, Jon and Sansa in the two armchairs, Rickon sprawled on his stomach on the floor. Sansa brought in a plate of freshly-baked gingersnaps, and they eat their way through them while half-listening to an interview on the radio with Willas Tyrell, who’s just published a memoir about his Quidditch career and the accident that ended it. 

“That’s your friend’s brother, isn’t it?” Jon asks.

“Yes.”

Sansa’s never met Willas, although she suspects, from Margaery’s constant praise of his kindness and good looks, that Margaery may have been planning to set her up with him — or at least she had been, before. Sansa hadn’t been averse to the idea either. She hasn’t dated since Joffrey, and she knew that moving on from him with an older Quidditch star, even one with a bad leg, would’ve been a coup. And in truth, if Willas was as sweet as his sister said, Sansa wouldn’t have minded falling a little bit in love with him, a man who treated her well and who never hurt her.

But it hardly matters now. How can Sansa think about dating? With Father dead, with Robb dead, with their family falling apart … 

“Next up,” says a bright, cheerful voice when the interview winds to a close, “we have an interview with the Minister of Magic, Cersei Lannister, here to talk about — ”

Sansa’s voice catches. “Turn it off — please.”

Hardly a moment passes, and then the room goes silent.

When Sansa looks around again, Jon is frowning at her, but she shakes her head and glances over at Rickon to see if he’s noticed anything. He’s still bent over a comic book that he’s been carrying around all day. She can’t see much of it from this angle, just a dark-haired square-jawed figure flitting back and forth across the pages, but earlier Rickon launched into an explanation of the hero’s current predicament and the slim chances of him saving the day. He’s certainly not paying attention to anything but the large cookie he’s still working on and the whizzes and explosions coming from the comic.

“Sansa.” Jon’s moved closer, leaning toward her over the arm of his chair. “Are you — ”

“It’s so quiet now,” she says before he can say anything about Cersei Lannister. Technically, Cersei is Jon’s boss, just as she’d been her father’s. She won’t cause trouble for him. 

“Quiet?”

“Winterfell. I can’t get used to it.”

His frown deepens momentarily, but then he says, “I know what you mean. This place always used to be so … ”

“Alive?”

He nods.

“Everyone was always coming by to consult with Father. I don’t know if he was ever alone in his office. And then you and Robb would bring Theon around, and Theon always brought someone else around, and you always kicked up a ruckus. Well, not _you_ , I suppose, but them.” Jon almost laughs. “And Mother had her parties. You remember her parties? Everyone loved the Solstice party, but my favorite was the one she threw every year for her and Father’s anniversary.”

Jon rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he says, but there’s something off in his voice. “I remember.”

“Why are you making that face?”

“I’m not — ”

“You are.”

“Sansa.”

“Jon.”

He glares for a long moment, but then he sighs, averting his eyes. “I didn’t go to many of those parties,” he says at last. “Your mother didn’t want me there.”

“Oh.”

Her stomach drops, and she hears him telling her, “Sansa, it’s really not — ”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “But … you were there sometimes, weren’t you? I remember the Solstice party during your and Robb’s seventh year, and you were both there, skulking around, and it wasn’t even half eleven by the time Robb was … ” She hesitates.

“Completely pissed?”

“Yes! And I helped you drag him to Father’s study before he made an absolute fool of himself. I remember that night very well! I wrinkled my dress and got scolded for ignoring my date.”

“Right,” says Jon. “Joffrey.”

That year at the Solstice party, Joffrey had been insufferable, demanding, his fingers digging like claws into her waist and his lips wet on her neck. She kept shrugging him off, trying to say, _My parents are right there_ , and when she’d seen Robb tripping over his own feet at the punch bowl, she’d seized on the excuse to slip Joffrey’s grasp. It hadn’t lasted, but for a few minutes at least, she felt like she could breathe again.

“I don’t want to talk about him right now,” Sansa says.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Just reminds me how stupid I was.”

Jon’s touch on her arm is brief but warm. “You’ve never been stupid, Sansa. You were just a little girl.”

“It doesn’t matter,” is all she can say to that. “You’re just distracting from my point, which is that I know you were at some of Mother’s parties. And you had fun, didn’t you? Sometimes?”

He smiles. “I had fun,” he admits. “When I went.”

Still, she can’t help but wonder how often he didn’t attend. All those years, Sansa never even noticed. She supposes she’d assumed Jon was around; he lived in their house, so of course he must’ve been at their parties. Probably she never even thought about it, or him, or anything other than how her dress looked and whether some boy would dance with her and whether Cersei Lannister, the most elegant woman in the British Wizarding World, would compliment her on her manners.

Sansa opens her mouth to say something, anything, but then Rickon calls over, “I’m _bored_ ,” so Sansa joins him on the floor. They play a round of exploding snap and then she lets him win a game of chess, and just as he begins to demand that Jon play him now, Sansa tells him that it’s time for him to go to bed.

He doesn’t want to, of course, and she must beg and bully and bribe him to even go to his bedroom. Once there, he refuses to sleep, because he knows that Sansa will be gone in the morning, so she sits with him for a long time and swears to return in only a few weeks, swears that Christmas is just around the corner.

“Are you holding up all right, my love?” she asks, unable to help herself. She brushes the hair from his forehead and tries not to cry.

“I miss Father,” he says. “I wish he would come home.”

“Me too.”

He still won’t settle, so finally she sings to him, first “Alysanne” and then “Seasons of My Love,” until at last he falls asleep, his face still scrunched in displeasure, though it eases somewhat when Sansa presses a kiss to his cheek.

* * *

It’s no later than ten when Sansa goes hunting for Jon’s room. She’s never been inside it, not once, although she knows it’s not in the same corridor as her brothers’ rooms. Sansa vaguely recalls that as boys, Jon and Robb shared adjacent rooms, but at least since they went to Hogwarts, Jon has been relegated to a corridor all his own, not technically the guest wing but far enough that one could hardly call it the family wing.

Jon’s lived at Winterfell longer than she has, Sansa realizes. And still: the guest wing.

His room is easy to spot, once she’s found the right corridor. Every doorway save one is dark, and it ought to feel forbidding, but the light that spills around the edges of the second door down is surprisingly warm. Or is it just that she knows that he’s inside?

She knocks before she can think the better of it, and when he cracks the door open, confusion clear on his face, she holds up a bottle of wine — Merlot, it says on the label — that she took from the kitchen. “Want a drink?”

“Since when do you drink wine?” he asks, but he opens the door the rest of the way.

“I had some at school a few times. I don’t mind it.” She’s had it with Professor Baelish mostly — Petyr, he says to call him. He stills like to meet with her every now and again, and since her father died, since he was the one to help her, she can’t help but feel she owes him something. If he wants to ask about her schoolwork and her family, she sees no reason to deny him.

“It’s red,” Sansa says, rather stupidly. “Do you like red?”

Jon blinks, as if trying to get his eyes to focus. “I like red.” He clears his throat. “I guess you’d better come in.”

She hurries past him before he changes his mind.

“Sorry, I know it’s a bit … ” He closes the door again and after staring at her for a long, long moment, he seems to shake himself and begins hastily kicking a few dirty pairs of socks and pants under his bed. 

All things considered, though, it’s actually quite tidy. Small, she can’t help but notice, but tidy. Yes, there’s a half-open bag spilling over with parchment and what might be a spare set of robes — probably something he brings with him to work, and maybe back and forth to his London flat. And the room’s decor is surely the work of a younger Jon. A few posters hang on his walls. Quidditch teams. Men with guitars and too-serious faces. It takes a second, but she recognizes the latter as the bands Robb and Jon loved when they were at Hogwarts. The Night’s Watch. Beric Dondarrian and the Brotherhood Without Banners. There’s a poster of a woman too, a blonde woman, very beautiful, dressed all in leather: Princess Val, the poster says. She looks like the kind of woman who would never let a boy like Joffrey make her feel small. She looks like the kind of woman Jon would admire.

Beside the bed, Jon’s piled about two dozen books on top each other in three separate piles, so that they form what appears to be a makeshift bedside table, if the glass of water and the pair of reading glasses sitting atop it are anything to go by. The piles are composed primarily of what look like Quidditch strategy books and a few well-worn Defense Against the Dark Arts textbooks, but she’s sure she spots a copy of her favorite novel, _Queen Naerys and the Dragonknight_ , on top of _Quidditch Through the Ages_.

A mirror hangs on the wall beside an antique armoire, though only half of the mirror’s surface can be used for its intended purpose, given that its frame is littered with photographs tucked into the edges. She can see one photograph from a family vacation several years back — she has that one too, in a frame in her room — and one with two little boys standing beside the Hogwarts Express in brand new robes. Robb and Jon, eleven years old, about to leave for Hogwarts for the first time. Her father must’ve taken that picture. Sansa’s never seen it before.

Jon offers her his desk chair, a hard-backed wooden thing that doesn’t even have a cushion, and then he perches on the edge of his rumpled bed. It is evident that Ghost has spent considerable time shedding on Jon’s dark duvet. 

Jon stares at her as she uncorks the wine, as she conjures two glasses from the kitchen, and as she fills each one a little fuller than etiquette dictates. He stares at her, and she can see there’s something guarded in his face. She wishes in that moment that she could read his thoughts. Maybe then she could understand him.

When she hands him his wine, he deposits it, without even a sip, on top of his pile of books, and frowns. “What is this about, Sansa?”

She rubs her finger alone the edge of her wineglass, before steeling herself with a deep drink. “You don’t have to talk to me. You aren’t obligated to spend time with me. I know that I’m just Robb’s little sister, but — ”

“No,” says Jon. “I mean, you are Robb’s little sister, ‘course you are, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to you. I do. It’s just … we’ve never really … ” He shakes his head.

“I know. That’s what I wanted to talk about.” She swipes at a droplet of wine on the side of the glass and tries to make herself look at him. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the things I said to you in August.”

“Sansa — ”

“I didn’t mean it. It’s not your fault, what happened to Robb, none of it. I know that.” She drinks more of her wine, willing it to flush the nervousness from her system. “And I’m sorry for how things have been between us. Even before. I wanted Mother to be happy, and it felt like I had to choose, you or her, and I couldn’t not choose her. I still feel like I have to choose. I was trying to be a good daughter, and it made me a bad … ” Friend? Sister? She takes another drink and shrugs. “I should’ve been nicer.”

After another long stare that she can’t even begin to parse, he says, “Don’t be sorry. You were a child.”

“I wasn’t a child in August.” Before he can protest, she adds, “And Mother’s not a child.”

He sighs and reaches for his wine, and it pleases her to think that he may just be as uncomfortable as she is. “What happened to Robb,” he says finally. “It’s shit. It’s shit and none of us know how to deal with it. What you said — I understand why you said it. And your mother. I understand that too.”

“Well,” Sansa says, “I don't. I wish I knew why she was the way she was with you. I tried to talk to her about it, but she wasn’t making any sense.”

He leans back on his elbows, turning his gaze to the ceiling, and Sansa notices as his shirt pulls taut against the muscles in his chest. “I’m sure she has her reasons.” She can hear the hesitation in his voice, so she waits, and indeed, more than a minute later he says, “You know that your father knew my mother for a long time? They were friends since they first went to Hogwarts. They were long before your mother knew him.” His head tilts sideways — toward the mirror, she realizes “That’s her, the one with the blue roses. That’s the only picture I have of her. Lyanna Snow.”

Sansa tears her eyes from Jon and walks over to the mirror, scanning through the photographs. He’s got several of Bran and Arya, mostly playing and pulling faces, and one of himself holding baby Rickon. He’s got pictures with Robb and Theon and a fat, kind-faced boy Sansa knows to be Sam Tarly, who’d been in Ravenclaw with Sansa and who now works as the librarian at Hogwarts. There’s a Muggle photograph of a freckled, red-haired woman, whose athletic build reminds Sansa of the poster of Princess Val. There’s one of Ned with his arm around Jon’s shoulders that makes something ache in Sansa’s chest. There’s even a picture of Sansa, sitting on a garden wall on a rare sunny day, her red braid pulled over her shoulder and Lady sitting primly on the ground a few feet below, her head lifted so that Sansa can reach down to pet it. Sansa is thirteen and barefoot and she can’t stop smiling. She wishes she could remember that day.

Then Sansa sees what she was meant to see all along. A girl of no more than nineteen or twenty in a shimmering blue dress, with blue roses woven into her black hair. She is visibly pregnant and keeps pressing her hands to her belly, posing sideways so as to show off her bump.

“She’s beautiful,” Sansa says. “You look just like her.”

“After she died, your dad took me in — as if I was his responsibility. And since she never told anybody who the father was, I’ve always wondered if your mother thinks … ” She turns to find his eyes on her, sad and serious.

Oh.

Her heart plummets into her stomach so fast it makes her dizzy. “She thinks you’re Father’s son.” She leans on the armoire for support. “Are you?”

Jon’s watching her carefully, but he doesn’t hesitate when he says, “No. Ned would never do that your mother. And my mum, she was like a sister to him.”

She looks at him, still feeling queasy. He _could_ be Father’s: they have the same coloring, the same tone of voice. They have the same solemn faces. She doesn’t know how it never occurred to her before, except that it was unthinkable, her father doing such a thing.

She thinks of the picture of Lyanna Snow, who was so beautiful, and whom Jon so resembles. Many of the traits that could’ve come from Ned Stark could also could have come from Lyanna: dark hair, dark eyes, the shape of his nose, the angle of his jaw.

“You’re sure?” she asks.

He nods. “I’m sure. I used to think … but then we talked about it. Me and Ned. He made it clear that he raised me like his own, but I'm not his.”

She bites her tongue to keep herself from asking, _Then who is your father?_

She remembers her mother’s words: his blood is cursed. Did she say it because she despised Lyanna Snow, Eddard Stark’s beloved childhood friend, and suspected her of seducing her husband? Did she believe Jon’s sordid beginnings were not only an affront to her sense of tradition but also a personal betrayal?

Or maybe Catelyn meant something else entirely.

And if Jon didn’t have Ned’s blood, then whose did he have? Who left Lyanna Snow pregnant and alone in the midst of a war? Somehow Sansa never thought to wonder.

Jon, watching her, has a guarded expression on his face, and she can’t help but sit beside him on the edge of his bed and squeeze his hand. Something terrible and vulnerable shines out of his eyes for a moment. “You’re his in every way that counts,” she tells him. “You’re Jon.”

“I’m not a Stark.”

She takes another drink of wine but she can’t say it. _You are to me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I don't know. This makes no sense and I don't know where it's going but I keep writing it anyway. It's been my side project while I work on chapter 3 of A Heart That Offends, but it's getting messy too. (Still fun to write though, and isn’t that what really matters?) Bear with me, I guess.
> 
> As ever, my asoiaf/got/mostly jonsa sideblog on tumblr is [here](http://noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth.tumblr.com/). It's mostly reblogs but I also talk about my far too numerous AU ideas if you're into that kind of thing.


	4. November II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa goes back to Hogwarts and finds she misses home -- and Jon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little chapter with some good ol' angst. Next chapter (December) will be a big one because it's back to Winterfell!

Days later, Sansa still can’t shake the question from her head — the secret of Jon’s missing father, his dead mother, and whatever knowledge of the matter Eddard Stark took to his grave. 

Worse, she can’t shake the memory of Jon that last morning at Winterfell, how he’d carried her bag to the end of the path and smiled his shy smile. She’d touched his hand without meaning to, just a brief clasp of her fingers around his, and his eyes had gone wide before she blushed and stepped away. “You — you’ll tell Rickon I’ll be home soon?”

He’d lowered his gaze and nodded, passing her the bag, and then she was gone, back to Hogwarts and all the loneliness it holds.

* * *

“You better come quick!”

Sansa turns at her vanity, setting her brush aside. “Jeyne, what is it?” There are two pink spots high on Jeyne’s cheeks, and her hands are fluttering nervously through the air. “What’s happened?”

“It’s Arya.” Sansa’s stomach lurches, but Jeyne continues, “She’s shouting for you outside the common room. She sounds angry.”

Sighing, Sansa retrieves her dressing gown from where it lays across her bed and shrugs it on. Arya sounds angry. Of course. These days Arya _always_ sounds angry.

In the common room, past the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw and past the work tables where handfuls of students are still gathered to study, Sansa hears her sister’s voice, muffled but unmistakable. “Listen you swots,” she’s calling through the door, “I need to talk to Sansa Stark!” She ignores the inquisitive glances of her fellow Ravenclaws. She shouldn’t blame them for their nosiness — a year ago she would’ve felt the same in their place — but part of her hates them anyway, hates them and envies them.

“I — ” Jeyne glance flickers nervously between Sansa and the door. “I can tell her to leave. Say you’re not here or something. Or I could try to find Bran?”

“No,” Sansa says with a wan smile. “No, I’d better see what she wants.”

The thing is, it’s not unheard of for Stark siblings to turn up at Ravenclaw Tower. When Sansa first came to Hogwarts, Robb stopped by now and again, ostensibly to make use of the superior study spaces, not to mention to flirt with a set of girls who (unlike his fellow Gryffindors) still found him mysterious and attractive, but mostly, she knew, to look after her. He worried that she felt like an outsider in her own family, the first Stark not to be Sorted into Gryffindor in generations; she wasn’t even a Hufflepuff, as their mother had been, and her mother before that. It was sweet of him, and he kept up the visits even after Bran became a Ravenclaw too, sometimes dragging Arya along with him — but Robb didn’t know that, for all she doted on her brother and adored her father, Sansa had been happy about her Sorting. It was exactly what she’d wanted.

Sansa had come to Hogwarts hoping to set herself apart from her family, dreaming of a life far more romantic than the ones that Starks seemed to live. Oh, they were good and brave and honorable, and her father had fought valiantly in the last war, but they didn’t tell stories about him, they didn’t sing songs, they way they did about Joffrey’s father and the Dark Lord’s son. And at eleven, all Sansa cared about were stories and songs. Fantasies of romance and beauty, of a soft, pretty world, that had nothing to do with the reality. 

Oh, she had been a stupid girl, but she had learned.

Sansa steps into the corridor and lets the door fall shut behind her. “Well?” she says. “What do you want?”

It’s obvious Arya’s just come from the Quidditch pitch: her face is scuffed with mud and the hem of her robes is wet. Despite playing a game in which she’s supposed to remain off the ground almost the entire time, Arya has a miraculous and notorious ability to end up covered in filth and gore. She’s known for her stunt dives and her foolhardy maneuvers, crash landings that leave crowds screaming wildly. Skidded knees, black eyes, broken arm, broken nose, broken foot — she’s had them all. “Every hurt is a lesson,” she used to tell their mother whenever Catelyn scolded her for her recklessness. “And every lesson makes you better.”

Now that she’s a Seeker, she doesn’t end up quite as bloody as she did as a Beater, but not by much.

“Did you trail mud all this way for a reason?” Sansa asks.

“As a matter of fact, _princess_ , I did. I got a letter from Jon.”

Sansa perks up, brushing aside Arya’s familiar sarcasm. “You got a letter from Jon? Did he … ” She bites her lip. “Did he have a message for me?”

Arya is small, much smaller than Sansa, but she has a way of standing that increases her presence somehow — strong and proud, not at all like a lady, and sometimes a little too close, her eyes unyielding, unnerving. It makes Sansa feel peculiar, like _she’s_ the younger sister and Arya’s just condescending to speak with her, ready to disabuse her of her childish notions.

“Don’t be stupid. He said that he was there when you went home.”

When Arya doesn’t say anything else, Sansa says slowly, “Yes, well, he was.”

“But you didn’t you tell me he would be there.”

Sansa frowns, shaking her head, trying to follow Arya’s elliptic train of thought. “No,” she agrees at last, “I didn’t. I didn’t know. Why does it matter?”

“You know why.” The look Arya gives her could spoil a batch of Amortentia, bitter enough that Sansa almost flinches. “I don’t like the idea of _you_ , being _you_ , without anyone there to defend him. Treating him like dogshite, like you always have. Like he isn’t twice the Stark you are.”

So this is what Arya thinks of her. But that doesn’t mean … 

“Is that what Jon said?” Sansa asks, and she can hear the harshness in her own voice. “Is that what he told you in his letter? That I treated him badly?”

“Of course not — that’s not Jon. But I know you. And I know you’ll turn Rickon against him if you can. I won’t let you do it.”

Sometimes, in the depths of Joffrey’s cruelty, Sansa would imagine that her body was stone, solid and impenetrable, as invulnerable as the stones of Winterfell itself. She felt nothing. She could weather anything. Winterfell had stood for hundreds of years and so could she.

She thought, after the breakup, that she would remember what it felt like to be flesh again, but then Father died, and Robb, and now, as Arya’s words reach her, Sansa feels herself going hard again. Hard as stone. Hard as steel.

“I would never turn Rickon against Jon,” Sansa says. She has to dig her fingernails into her palms to keep herself grounded. To not think about those things that it was better to forget. “I know what Jon is worth.”

“I don’t believe you,” Arya says. “You always thought you were better than him.” Sansa clenches her hands even harder, her focus narrowing to two sharp points of pain. “You thought you were better than all of us. You and that prat Joffrey and that whole lot.”

Sansa bites the inside of her mouth until she tastes blood. It feels like a long time passes before she can say, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know — ”

“What do you know, Arya? My relationship with Jon is _mine_. It’s complicated but it’s _mine_.”

Arya, scoffing, closes in on her, and Sansa has to fight the urge to stumble backward. This is Arya, she tries to remind herself. Her sister. Who can be real a twat when she wants to, but who wouldn’t, couldn’t, hurt her.

“What, now that Robb’s dead, you need a replacement brother?”

“Of course not,” Sansa snaps, too loud, and Arya at least has the grace to look ashamed. “No one can replace Robb. No one. Ever.” She bites the inside of her mouth again, but this time it’s to keep herself from crying. “And Jon’s — ”

 _He’s not my brother_ , she wants to say, but it’s a pointless hair to split. He is family. She understands that much.

“Is that everything, Arya,” she says in a tight voice, “or is there anything else you’d like to accuse me of?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, turning back to the Ravenclaw door and signaling for the knocker to offer up its riddle.

In its musical voice, the bronze eagle intones:

_I move very slowly at an imperceptible rate,_

_although I take my time, I am never late._

_I accompany life, and survive past demise,_

_I am viewed with esteem in many girls’ eyes._

Behind her, Arya mutters, “I hate that bloody bird,” but when Sansa turns around again, Arya’s disappeared. Her throat tightens, but she swallows it down.

With a shake of her head, she asks for the riddle again, registering the words this time. The knocker’s been obsessed with rhyming riddles lately, a change from the more theoretical questions it tends to prefer, and they always take her longer than they should. She folds her hands together as she considers it.

“I move very slowly,” Sansa murmurs to herself. “I accompany life and survive past demise.”

Against her will, she thinks about Robb. He always took his inability to solve the knocker’s riddles in good humor, but when he brought Arya along with him on his visits, she took her failure personally. Bran would tell Arya that if she could just hold her temper and think, she was more than smart enough to think it through, but Sansa liked to take the opportunity to call her sister stupid. She remembers how Robb would gently scold her. _You’re the big sister_ , he’d said. _You’ve got to be the grown up sometimes_.

What would he say to her now? Was she meant to be the grown up this time, as Arya told her that she was the worst of them all, barely worthy of being called a Stark? As if Sansa doesn’t already know that. As if she doesn’t already wish that it had been her instead of Robb and Father.

Sansa combs a hand through her hair, her fingers tangling in the still-unbrushed ends. Robb would —

But then the answer comes to her in a flash and she all but shouts, “Hair!” 

The door swings open and she steps inside, not looking back.

* * *

“Everything all right?” Jeyne asks that night in the darkness of the dormitory.

Sansa shifts uncomfortably, turning onto her side. She doesn’t know how to talk to Jeyne anymore. Even though Jeyne is Sansa’s oldest friend, Sansa’s time with Joffrey drove a wedge between them. He hadn’t liked her spending time with “that half-blood” and she feared that Jeyne would begin to see through Sansa’s excuses for Joffrey, her long absences, the bruises she might spot in the privacy of their room. And since Father’s death, Jeyne only reminds Sansa of happier days — and of shame.

She did not blame Jeyne for their unkindness as girls, the way they’d teased Arya and called her names, the things they’d said about Jon because he was an orphan and a bastard and tended toward melancholy. After all, Arya and Jon were Sansa’s family, not Jeyne’s. 

And the things Sansa had allowed Joffrey to say, to do ... she had no one to blame for that but herself.

“Sans?” whispers Jeyne, a hint of concern in her voice.

“Of course,” Sansa lies. “Everything’s fine.”


	5. December I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last few days of term before the Christmas holiday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like the November chapters, December's going to be split into (at least) two parts.
> 
> [Warning: Baelish's behavior is particularly egregious in this chapter. As on the show and in the books, he forces a kiss on Sansa.]

The weeks leading up to the Christmas holiday are always hectic. Professors want to cram as much knowledge into students as they can before they disappear for two weeks and forget it all. This means that students — preoccupied with snowball fights and gift exchanges and the inevitable winter romances that fizzle once the snow thaws — stay up late into the evening, ink staining their fingers as they sleepily scratch out their homework. In the final week of classes, Sansa has four essays due, plus a test in Divination, but she’s also promised to go to Hogsmeade with Margaery to help her find a gift for Loras, so the Friday before the last Hogsmeade trip of the year, Sansa holes up in the library with her books and doesn’t leave until Sam Tarly tells her, his voice shaking a little, that the library technically closed five minutes ago. He’s blushing.

“Oh!” She starts scooping her things into her bag, shuffling the parchment together and hoping it doesn’t get too crumpled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late.” She offers him an apologetic smile, and he blushes even pinker. 

“That’s all right, Sansa. When I was a student, I was often in here till the last minute too.”

She doesn’t really know him, even though he’d been a member of her House for most of her years at Hogwarts. Back then, she’d been wrapped up in Joffrey, at first willingly and then not, and for a long while the only people she spoke to were his friends, his lackies, his fellow Slytherins. It’s how she met Margaery, so it wasn’t all bad, but she knows it earned her a reputation as a snob, one she still hasn’t managed to shake. Even her siblings in Gryffindor thought she’d gotten above herself, simply because she was dating the Minister of Magic’s son, and so did several of the older Ravenclaws, who wondered why she never spent any time with her own House. She’s not sure if she ever spoke more than a word or two to Sam, over the dinner table or in the common room, but she also can’t remember him ever being unkind to her. Then again, it’s hard to imagine him being unkind to anyone.

She says, “I’ll be off, then.”

“Wait,” says Sam. “Let me write you a pass. If you don’t get back to the tower in the next — ” He pulls a pocket watch from out of his robes. “ — three minutes, you’ll be out after hours. I don’t want you to get in any trouble.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“No, it’s no trouble at all. ‘Sides, when I took this job, Jon made me swear I’d look out for you Starks if I could. If all it takes to do that is writing a pass, then it’s best I do it, I think.”

“Of course he did that. How very Jon of him.” Sansa tucks her hair behind her ear. “Well, thank you, Mr. Tarly.”

“You know you can call me Sam. Now run along. Good night.”

On the way back to Ravenclaw, Sansa hears Joffrey’s voice echoing through the corridor. Prefects already on patrol. She doubles back and takes another route, and she doesn’t hear him again.

* * *

The night before Sansa and her siblings are due to return home for Christmas, Professor Baelish invites Sansa to his office. As soon as he sees her, a small crease appears between his eyebrows. “My dear,” he cries, “you must be freezing!” He presses a glass of wine into her hand.

Sansa feels all right, actually, but she doesn’t doubt that she looks unwell, pale and poorly-rested after the last few grueling days of the term, so she sips the wine politely and doesn’t object when his wand slips from his sleeve and he starts a fire in the hearth.

Professor Baelish’s office is the tidiest office Sansa has ever seen, every book and every paper in its correct place. Sansa’s father’s office was always in disarray, not from lack of organization, she knows, because he could always find what he needed — he was just too busy, the advisor and confidante of half of the witches and wizards in Scotland, it seemed. And, unlike Sansa’s father, Professor Baelish hasn’t cluttered his office with personal items: pictures of family, mementos, a child’s messy drawing. No, his walls are empty, save for an intricate embroidery of a silver and black mockingbird that hangs beside the door and a single decorative sword mounted behind his desk.

Sansa tells him about her classes and her essays and her exam, giggling a little when she describes how Melisandre, the divination professor, gazed deep into a flame for a long, long time before at last predicting that it _would_ snow on Christmas day. The wine tastes good, sweeter than the bottle she’d shared with Jon more than a month ago, and she can feel the color returning to her cheeks. It really is very kind of Professor Baelish to check in on her.

He’s pulled his chair around to the front of his desk so that when he leans forward, he’s almost knee-to-knee with her. His gray-green eyes are intent upon Sansa’s face. “And aside from school, Sansa? How are you?”

“I’m all right, Professor.”

“What have we talked about, Sansa? Call me Petyr.”

“Petyr.”

“Good.” He flashes a smile and pats her knee. “I admit, I do worry about you. After that awful day on Diagon Alley, and then — well, you know it all.” He watches her swallow another mouthful of wine before he continues. “And I understand you visited home last month. How is your mother?”

“She’s — she’s fine.”

“Dear Cat. Oh, you are so like her when she was young. Even more beautiful, I daresay.”

Sansa’s face has begun to feel warm. She wonders if it would be rude to ask him to put out the fire. “Thank you.”

“You know, once, long ago, I asked your mother to marry me. Think, in another world, you might’ve been our child.” His hand has returned to her knee, warmer than before. Before she can react, he says, “Here, let me top that up,” and adds another splash of wine to her glass. Her smile has started to feel tight, but she takes another sip.

“Now, tell me the truth,” Petyr says. “Has Joffrey been causing you any trouble?”

“No,” Sansa says, but she says it too slowly, and he arches an eyebrow at her. She knows she should stick to the lie, just as she had with Professor Lannister, but Professor Baelish — Petyr — already seems to know the truth. 

And then he’s frowning at her, clicking his tongue. “Sansa. I’m disappointed. Have I been anything but honest with you?”

She shakes her head.

“Do you not appreciate that I ask you here to talk with me? I don’t do this for every student. Only for you. Because you are special.”

“I know,” she says. “Thank you. I am — I am grateful.”

“Yet you’re lying to me.”

She shakes her head again, but it’s heavy. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to. But Joffrey hasn’t said a word to me in weeks. I promise.” He keeps watching her, and now both of his hands are covering both knees, and she doesn’t know what she is supposed to say. “Halloween,” she tells him finally. “He caused me trouble on Halloween. But not since then.”

“What did he do?” Petyr whispers, his head lowered.

“He — he kissed me.”

Sansa doesn’t know what to make of the low chuckle with which Petyr responds to this statement, and then he’s looking up at her again, smiling, and he reaches one of his hands into the pocket of his robe. Withdrawing his hand, he offers a small box wrapped in brown paper.

“This is for you,” he says. “Happy Christmas.”

“Oh, I couldn’t — ”

“Take it,” he says, and his other hand moves, just a little, up her thigh. 

She swallows. Unwraps the box. Opens it.

Within, she finds a delicate golden necklace with a mockingbird pendant. “Oh,” she says, uncertain. “It’s lovely. But — ”

And then Petyr leans even closer and presses his thin lips to Sansa’s mouth for one endless, terrifying moment. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t breathe.

“It’s yours,” he says, the back of his hand stroking over her cheek, and Sansa stammers that it’s late, she must pack for the holidays, but she is grateful, terribly grateful, for the gift and his kindness and all his attention and — and she hopes that he has a very happy Christmas. 

She’s back in her room, the chain clutched in her palm, when she realizes that her mouth is still fixed in a rigid smile, teeth clenched so hard it hurts.

* * *

The Starks arrive in London in silence. They boarded the Hogwarts Express without a word, and though Arya glared at Sansa and Sansa glared at Arya and Bran refused to touch the sandwich Sansa dropped into his lap, they managed not to argue the entire ride. It helped, probably, that Arya fell asleep fifteen minutes in and didn’t wake up until the train rumbled to a stop.

(Sansa’s surprised Arya even bothered to share a car with her and Bran, but now that she thinks of it, most of Arya’s friends probably stayed at Hogwarts for the holiday. She's heard that Gendry, the Gryffindor Beater, is an orphan, and if she were Podrick she’d prefer the company of his aunt Brienne to any family get-together than might involve his father’s brother, the repugnant and terrifying Ilyn Payne, whom Sansa had been unfortunate enough to meet on several occasions while spending time with the Lannisters.)

At King’s Cross, Sansa spots Margaery, who hurries over and kisses her cheek. “Grandmama is having a bash for New Year’s. Say you’ll come.”

“I’ll think about it,” Sansa says.

Margaery regards her seriously. “You can’t be sad forever, Sansa.”

Sansa sighs. “Will Joffrey be there?”

“Probably,” Margaery admits. “But even he’s not stupid enough to say a word to you with my grandmother around.”

“I’ll think about it,” Sansa says again, and Margaery shakes her head and clicks her tongue and hurries back to where Loras and her father are waiting.

Joffrey is nowhere to be seen now, but Sansa knows from experience that he is usually the first off the train, hustled into a shiny black automobile and driven to the Ministry, where one of his mother’s secretaries will greet him, bowing and scraping, and offer a luxurious lunch spread before he Floos home to Casterly Rock. And of course, Joffrey’s old enough to Apparate now, so perhaps he’s gone straight home. If she’s lucky, that will be exactly what’s happened.

She and Arya and Bran must make their way to Diagon Alley, and from there to the Wintertown Inn. It is no particular hardship, even in the chill, but some foolish part of her had forgotten, had half-expected to see Robb waiting for them in his winter coat and the hat with the ear flaps. Or Father and Mother, surprising them with a special dinner in London before they went home for the holiday. But that would never happen again.

Sansa shakes herself and pulls her bag as well as Bran’s from the trolley. “Arya,” she begins, before she realizes that Arya has vanished.

Most likely, she is simply seeing off a friend, or a teammate from Quidditch. Most likely, there is nothing to fear. She ran away _once_ , in the midst of grief and terror, but as much as she might hate Sansa, she wants to go home, surely. She wants to see Mother, and Rickon, and Jon.

Sansa draws in a shaky breath to keep herself from shouting for Arya, and glances down at Bran instead. His expression is unreadable, but he seems to understand her question, because he lifts a hand and points.

Through the crowd of Muggles gathering at Platform 9 and the dispersing young wizards and witches leaving at their parents’ sides, Sansa sees a small figure with dark, messy hair weaving between bodies with remarkable agility. And then the figure moves, the head turns — and yes, no mistaking that profile, that’s Arya — and she does something strange. She _leaps_.

Sansa thinks at first that Arya is attacking someone, throwing the full weight of her body against — who? An enemy? A bully? A Muggle? Sansa’s dropping her bag and reaching for her wand before she knows it.

But the crowd parts a little and Sansa realizes that Arya is not attacking someone. She’s _hugging_ them.

It’s Jon.

Sansa heart staggers against her ribcage for a moment. It must be relief. Arya’s not in trouble after all. And Jon is here. Jon has come.

Picking up her bag once more, and shouldering Arya’s abandoned one as well, Sansa walks slowly toward Jon and Arya. Bran wheels ahead, faster than her, but she doesn’t mind. She likes to see the way Jon greets him, with a ruffle of his hair that she can tell almost makes Bran smile. 

When Jon sees her, the corner of his mouth lifts and then he’s pushing past her siblings and lifting the bags from her grasp. “Sansa,” he says, and it comes out a little rough, like he’s strained his voice. He clears his throat. “Good to see you.”

“You too,” she says. “I didn’t realize you were coming.”

He adjusts one of the bags so that it sits more firmly on his shoulder and begins walking back toward Bran and Arya. She follows him. “It was a last-minute decision,” he says. “I was already in town for work, and I thought you might appreciate a familiar face. All of you, I mean. Afraid we’ll still have to Floo, but — ”

“Don’t apologize to _her_!” Arya interrupts. “Besides,” she says, and she sounds happier than Sansa has heard her in a long time, “I love the Leaky Caldron. Everyone there’s so weird.” 

The way Arya says _weird_ , you know it’s a good thing.

Jon’s frowning a little, his full lips beginning to part, but Sansa doesn’t want to give Arya anything else to fight her about, so she says, “Let’s go, then,” and begins leading them through the station. “I want to go home.”


	6. December II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmastime at Winterfell doesn't feel quite right without Ned and Robb, but does that mean they shouldn't celebrate at all?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back to this! I can promise that by the end of the month there'll be a Christmas Eve chapter (currently in the final stages of editing) and a New Year's Eve chapter.

Arya spends the entire trip home chattering about Gryffindor’s latest win and the Firebolt model that just got announced and how she absolutely _must_ show off the new dive she’s been practicing. Eventually Sansa simply stops listening to the conversation, not even glancing over for a second when Bran joins in, or when she hears Jon’s low chuckle, warm as a crackling fire.

At Winterfell, she’s barely begun unlacing her boots when Rickon comes skittering down the staircase. He hugs Bran first, a fierce hug that leaves him half on Bran’s lap, and then he puts his arms around Sansa and Arya. Jon ruffles his hair.

Before Arya can drag Jon outside to their makeshift Quidditch pitch, he tells her to run upstairs to greet her mother. She doesn’t back, but she’s gone for barely a moment before she returns, and then she’s grabbing Jon by the sleeve and insisting, “Let’s go, let’s go, before it gets dark.”

Rickon throws on a coat and bounds after them, ignoring Sansa’s call to put his mittens on. At least she can trust that Jon will make him bundle up. 

All evening bright gales of laughter float in on the winter breeze, and it is almost as if this summer never happened. It is almost normal.

Catelyn looks better than she had a month ago: more color in her cheeks, more recognition in her eyes. She greets them wearing a set of black robes, austere but clean, and her lovely hair has been brushed out and braided over her shoulder. She looks like herself, for the most part, though unmistakably aged. At one point Sansa catches her hiding an indulgent smile behind her hand when Bran mentions a craving for hot cocoa, and when she presses her dry lips to Sansa’s cheek, she seems almost happy. For the rest of the evening, her mother sits with Bran in her parlor, sharing a pot of cocoa that Old Nan made and asking him question about his studies. 

It’s the most interest Catelyn has shown in anything in months. It’s also the most Sansa has heard Bran has speak since school started. She can’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation — just long enough to learn that while his best subjects are still Transfiguration and Divination, he’s at the top of his class in almost everything, Defense included. His peers have finally learned to stop underestimating him just because he’s in a chair. It is only Herbology that causes him any trouble.

Sansa eats dinner in the kitchen with Nan, who fusses over her and tells her she’s too pale, and then she retreats to her bedroom, eager to do nothing more than sprawl in her bed and read a book.

She’s brought with her a history of the last war, a thick tome by the renowned historian Aemon that had been recommended to her by Sam Tarly. In part she is being a responsible student: with NEWTs coming up, she really ought to know more about recent wizarding history, including the war that killed her grandfather and uncle and brought Joffrey’s family to power. Another part of her is simply curious. Aerys Targaryen, the Mad Minister, had ruled only a generation ago and yet Sansa knows so little of his regime. Only that it had been deadly for everyone in Britain, magical and Muggle alike. Only that her own father preferred not to speak of it, his face growing solemn any time someone asked.

Just as she reaches the chapter about the death of the Mad Minister’s eldest son, she hears a creak at the door. Her heart constricts. It’s late now, well past midnight, and all she can think is that it is her father’s murderer, her brother’s murderer, come to kill her too. No — it’s Joffrey, it’s Cersei, it’s Petyr Baelish. 

But then she sees the silhouette, the small figure, bare feet, curly auburn hair.

“Sansa,” Rickon whispers, his babyish lisp more pronounced in in his sleepy state. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

She takes a few deep breaths, allowing the fear to seep from her bit by bit. She is stone. She is steel. “Of course,” she says sweetly and scoots over to make room for him. “Are you all right?”

“I had bad dreams,” is all he says as he crawls into bed beside her.

* * *

Even back when Sansa longed to escape from the provinciality of Winterfell, Christmastime made her heart cry out for home. Nowhere else looked so lovely at Christmas — not Hogwarts, not Casterly Rock, not even Highgarden. Towering trees stood evergreen in every room of the house, all atwinkle with icicles and fairy lights. More than a dozen more trees lined the path leading to the front entrance, these ones silver-white, with red and blue roses nestled in the branches, alongside a thousand tiny bells that rang merrily every time the wind blew. Garlands were hung in hallways, diaphanous snowflakes made of magic were charmed to fall all around you as you passed through the grand entryway, and lush ribbons of green and gold and garnet adorned all the bannisters. 

Best of all were the fifty or so unmelting ice sculptures that dotted the grounds immediately around the castle. They were carved into the shapes of heroes and heroines from old stories and songs, valiant sorcerers who’d battled ancient evils, beautiful witches who’d enchanted noble kings — not to mention a few shaped like the most majestic of magical creatures, centaurs and chimaeras and a single, glorious phoenix. Once as a girl Sansa had preened beside the translucent and gleaming statue of Alysanne, thinking she looked a little like the legendary woman. Arya, calling her an idiot, had thrown a snowball at Sansa and knocked Alysanne’s nose clean off.

In recent years the splendor has faded. 

Not long after Sansa left for Hogwarts, her father was promoted by Robert Baratheon to Senior Undersecretary. He began working long hours all year round, growing thinner and paler than she’d ever seen him, and soon the annual Solstice party became less about the beauty of the season — or about seeing family, friends, and neighbors — and more about entertaining important people from the Ministry. Sansa did not mind so much at first, pleased with her family’s growing importance, but all too soon she grew sick of letting Joffrey and his mother into her home. Even when she enjoyed herself, dancing and laughing and growing tipsy on sips of champagne, one glimpse of their cruel smiles and their hard green eyes was enough to ruin her evening.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” her father had said last year, when Sansa gathered the courage to ask if they could have a smaller, more intimate party, the kind they used to host. “I promise things will get back to normal soon.”

This year, of course, there is no question of hosting a party at Winterfell. Sansa suspects Winterfell will never see another party again.

As for decorations, it seems that they too are out of the question. No lights, no sculptures, not even a tree for the sitting room, a modest tree just for the family, trimmed with heirloom ornaments and the stuff of sentiment. Rickon asks when they are going to decorate, now that everyone’s home, and Catelyn tells him stiffly, “We’re spending Christmas with your aunt Lysa. There’s no reason to inconvenience the servants.” 

Rickon sulks for the rest of the afternoon, crying that he only wanted a tree, that _Father always got us a tree_. It doesn’t take long for Bran to grow irritated and roll away, or for Arya’s mood to turn foul, as it always does when someone mentions Father. Sansa does what she can to soothe Rickon. She steams him milk and sweetens it with honey, she sings him all his favorite songs, but it is only when Jon arrives home from work and takes him outside to play with the dogs that the tension in the house begins to abate.

Sansa brings her mother a cup of chamomile tea that evening before bed, and pretends not to notice when Catelyn fumbles for one of the potions at her beside and splashes some of it into the cup. She may be improved, but she is still not the woman she was.

“He only wants a Christmas tree,” Sansa says quietly. “He wants to feel like something’s the way it used to be.”

Catelyn blinks at her, her eyes pink and dull. “But nothing is the way it used to be.” She sighs. “It was your father’s job to pick the family tree. I can’t do it.” Staring down into her mug, she murmurs, “I haven’t bought a tree without Ned in more than twenty years.”

Sansa clenches her jaw. She could scream at her mother. It’s a tree, she wants to say. It’s just a bloody tree. It’s wood and pine needles and sparkling lights. It’s that simple.

But of course it isn’t.

Christmas without Father and Robb is no Christmas at all. Who will put the star at the top of the tree? Who will flick his wand and send presents zooming around the room, into the laps of their intended recipients? Who will run through the halls with Rickon on his back, bellowing “Jingle Bells” at the top of his lungs until everyone wakes up? 

Maybe it is better this way. No tree, no carols, no Christmas morning gathered together around the fire. Maybe this way when they think of the holiday, this year and its sadness will somehow disappear from the record: they will think only of the joy of the past.

The next morning, Sansa is woken by unhappy dreams, and for a long time she sits curled up in the seat beside the window, watching snow fall heavy and white across the moors. She glances a few times at the book balanced in her lap, but today she’s in no mood for reading about wars and murders and betrayals. She’s just learned that the Mad Minister’s son had a wife and two children who were killed in the crossfire at the Ministry. Sansa wonders if her father was there when they died. Tywin Lannister was. The book has a picture of him, grim but satisfied, staring straight into the camera, blinking very little. He is quoted as saying that Elia Martell and her children were unfortunate but acceptable collateral damage.

The few times she’d encountered him, Tywin had scared Sansa — but he’d scared Joffrey and Cersei too. In a way that had been a comfort. Professor Baelish had been right. Tywin Lannister had kept his grandson in check, for a time.

A sharp knock at the door shakes Sansa out of her thoughts. She sets the book aside.

It’s Jon.

He is standing outside her room, his shoulders slumped, his hands stuffed in his pockets. For a fraction of a moment he looks almost forlorn, before he seems to register her presence, his eyes widening as they flicker down her body and then up again.

Oh, bloody hell.

She’s still in her pajamas, a hideous oversized flannel shirt in stripes of Gryffindor scarlet and gold. It had belonged to Robb once, but she’d stolen it from him ages ago. Joffrey, who’d hated to see her in it — who’d hated to see any sign of loyalty toward anyone other than himself — had told her it looked dowdy and clashed with her red hair, so she’d packed it away to be worn only at home, at Winterfell, where only her family would see her. Her family and Jon.

She hasn’t thought about that in years.

Gaze averted, Jon clears his throat. “I woke you up.”

If only she’d thought to put on a dressing gown. But she hadn’t, so she crosses her arms over her chest instead. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “I was already up. What’s going on?”

Jon hasn’t said much to her since he met them at the train station. Not that she blames him. With everyone else back now, he has little reason to spend time with her. She can’t pretend she doesn’t know why he prefers her siblings; she can’t pretend he doesn’t have every right. That weekend in November was an anomaly.

(He still has work too, whatever that involves. Secretly she hopes he never leaves his desk. It would be safer that way.)

“I, uh.” He clears his throat again, and offers that familiar half-smile. “I thought I might get a tree.”

“A tree?”

“For the house. For Rickon. Might be a nice surprise.” She must make some sort of face, because he continues hurriedly, “I know your mother said not to, but — ”

“No, it’s — it’s a nice idea. I like it.”

“Really?”

She nods.

It _is_ a nice idea. She’d let her mother’s misery frighten her into believing for a moment that it was better not to acknowledge that Christmas has come, the first Christmas without Father or Robb, that somehow she can simply pretend it isn’t happening. All it takes is one look at Jon’s face to know better. There’s no pretending, not about this, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still be a family. It doesn’t mean there can never be lights again at Winterfell. Rickon is still just a child. He deserves the wonder of a beautiful Christmas in this beautiful place.

“I was thinking of walking into Wintertown,” Jon says, fiddling with the cuff of his jumper. He folds it up over his wrist, then back down again, before tugging it straight. 

She never noticed before, how large and strong his hands are, the bumps of his fine knuckles, his fingernails clipped a hair too short. “I thought,” he is saying, “if you wanted to come … ”

She blinks up at him. It takes her a moment to realize what he’s asking, but when she does she finds herself accepting his offer without stopping to think. “I’d love to! Just give me a minute to get dressed,” she says. “And I’m dying for a cup of tea.” She can feel herself grinning.

He stutters his acquiescence as she closes the door on him. There’s a hint of pinkness on his cheeks.

He must be surprised by her enthusiasm for a long walk in the snow. But fresh air is just what she needs right now, fresh air and hot tea and the quiet, steady presence of someone she trusts at her side.

* * *

“What are you doing?”

Sansa tenses, but it’s just Arya, leaning against the frame of the kitchen door, the beginnings of a frown on her face. Her gaze burns into Sansa, somehow accusatory — a familiar expression, after all these years, and yet alien in its current sharpness. This is how Arya has looked at her ever since Father died.

Sansa turns away and resumes filling the kettle.

From where he sits at the table, Jon says, “You’re sister’s boiling water.”

Arya’s irritation is plain in her voice. “You’re in your cloaks.”

“Well spotted.”

“Where are you going?”

Sansa lights the stove and sets the kettle over the heat. She keeps her eye on the little fan of flame instead of looking at them.

“Into town,” Jon says, and Sansa can _hear_ him grinning, the easy way he teases her sister, easy in a way she will never understand. Not with either of them.

“Together?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Why?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“What kind of surprise?”

Her suspicion is palpable, the way it was that evening Arya confronted her outside the Ravenclaw common room. _You always thought you were better than him_ , she’d spat out. _He’s twice the Stark you are_. Sansa can’t imagine what terrible thing Arya expects she will do to Jon, what evil Arya thinks her capable of, but she’s already grown weary of this argument. What else is there to say? Sansa knows she’s failed her family. She tells herself she must be brave, be kind, be smart — like Robb, like Father, like Mother. But she knows it’s only a child’s dream, imagining she could ever live up to their example. Arya doesn’t need to remind her.

“I can’t tell you,” Jon is saying, “that would ruin the — ”

Sansa doesn’t let him finish. “We’re getting a tree.” With a sigh, she turns to face her sister. “The surprise was a tree. But there’s no reason for me to go. You go with Jon.”

She ignores the look Jon shoots her, his furrowed brow and the soft pout of his lips. It had been thoughtful of him to ask her to join him, and she appreciates the efforts he has put into helping look after Rickon, but she doesn’t doubt he would rather spend the morning with Arya. 

Besides, Arya has the time. It hasn’t fallen to Arya to take care of Mother and the boys — it’s fallen to her. She can’t go off galavanting on a whim simply because she’s tired of the responsibility.

“We could all go,” Jon says, but Sansa shakes her head. He asks, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” She manages a smile. “Go on. Choose a good tree. I should check on Mother.”

She doesn’t see them out. She sits alone in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle’s cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see I'm finally getting into some of the plotty stuff. I've somewhat clunkily transposed ASOIAF events into the world of HP, but bear with me. I've got a good reason! (Admittedly "Mad Minister" just doesn't have the same ring as "Mad King.")
> 
> Also, I feel so bad having Sansa and Arya always misunderstanding each other. They're both in a really bad place right now. Please know that developing their relationship (as well as Sansa's relationship with Catelyn) is one of the main threads of this story overall -- it's gonna get better. Eventually.


	7. Christmas Eve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Eve, when it arrives, brings with it a feathery shower of snow and a foolish spark of excitement.

Christmas Eve, when it arrives, brings with it a feathery shower of snow and a foolish spark of excitement. She can’t suppress her smile as she flings her bedroom curtains open to reveal an untouched world, clean and white, pure in a way that makes Sansa long to be a little girl again. To dance in the snowfall and let the snowflakes melt on her tongue.

She draws a heart with her finger in the condensation on the window, then wipes it away. _I have no reason to think today will be better than yesterday_ , she tells herself firmly.

And yet, she always loved Christmas.

Besides, today will be different, at least, if not better. For the first time since Robb’s funeral, they will come together as a family _:_ they will eat a meal, laugh and gossip, drink sherry and cider, exchange gifts. It might be just what the Starks need right now. A moment of celebration. A moment of connection. Sansa would like that.

Ever since the morning Jon asked her to go to town, she’s kept to herself, eating dinners alone or with just her mother for company, and holing up in her bedroom with her book while the others told jokes and listened to the radio and played board games in the sitting room, basking in the yellow glow of the new Christmas tree.

The thing of it is, she doesn’t know how to be around any of them anymore, Jon and Arya least of all. Not here in this house where they’d known her, the child she’d been, before Hogwarts, before Joffrey — always lost in a dream, always wishing for something else — and now it feels like all of her inadequacies are laid bare before them.

Memories plague her: of Robb and Father, of Joffrey’s wand at her throat and Professor Baelish’s minty breath. Of Arya’s incandescent fury in the wake of Father’s murder, and of her sharp voice outside the Ravenclaw common room. Of that evening with Jon, sipping wine and asking him to forgive her. She doesn’t sleep well. Most nights Rickon turns up at her door, tear tracks on his face, and she lets him stay with her, holding him in her arms until long after he’s fallen asleep.

She’s felt suffocated under the weight of her family’s needs and her own failures. To get away from Winterfell, even just for a few hours, might help her to breathe again. Sansa has only been to the Eyrie once, but it had been astonishingly lovely.

True, Aunt Lysa seems to have little affection for Sansa, or indeed for any of her nieces or nephews, but given all that’s happened, surely Great Uncle Brynden will make the trip to the Eyrie, and perhaps even Edmure and his new wife and baby. And Lysa, a widow herself, might find some way to comfort her sister. It is possible.

Sansa even dresses up for the occasion, fishing a festive green frock out from the back of her closet and selecting a pair of antique silver earrings from her jewelry box. Her mother had given the earrings to her when she was twelve, but they’d belonged to her grandmother, Minisa Tully, first. All Sansa knows about her was that she’d died when Catelyn was very young, and that she’d been a powerful Healer renowned for her calm temperament.

Sweeping her hair back into a low bun, Sansa glances in her mirror and frowns. She still looks too pale, too unhappy. After a moment of indecision she dashes on a smear of red lipstick and swipes a bit of blush over her cheeks. 

_There_. She could almost be her old self again, that girl she used to be.

Downstairs, she finds Bran in the hallway, staring at nothing, expression far too melancholic for a boy so young, and only when she calls his name for a third time does he startle out of his reverie. 

“Hello, Sansa.”

“You look very handsome,” she says. 

It’s true, he does look handsome, but he also looks disconcertingly grown up in his gray cashmere jumper and a pair of slacks that might’ve been Robb’s. He’s gotten taller again. Standing, he might be taller than her.

A pink stain blooms across his cheeks and he rolls his eyes. “You look nice too,” he mutters, still the only one of her brothers who never forgets his manners. He adds, “Mother’s wrangling Rickon into clean clothes. He didn’t seem very happy about it. I haven’t seen Arya.”

“Ah. So you’re telling me to hold off putting on my heels, then?”

If Rickon’s in a mood there’s no telling how long it will take, so they decide to wait in the sitting room until everyone is ready. But someone is already there.

Jon sits on the sofa at the back wall, hunched over a coffee table with a plate of takeout curry in front of him. He’s surrounded by a variety of scrolls and sheafs of parchment, all spread out across the sofa. He’s also, Sansa notices, wearing sweatpants and a faded Holyhead Harpies shirt that he’s had for as long as Sansa can remember. He’s certainly not dressed for dinner.

Something twists in her stomach.

She curses herself. Of course Lysa did not include Jon in her invitation for Christmas Eve dinner, and Mother never would’ve asked her to. The way she’s been these past few months, she might’ve even forbidden it. 

If Father were still alive, he would’ve wanted to bring Jon along. Robb would’ve insisted. 

But Sansa didn’t even think of it. She’d forgotten about him. Again.

Before she can say anything — or make a shamefaced retreat, as no small part of her wants to do — he glances up, eyes widening a little as he sees her and Bran. He begins haphazardly shuffling his papers together and stuffing them inside a leather accordion file. “Thought you were off already.” His gaze flickers up again. “New dress?” His tongue darts out to wet his lips. “I, uh, I like it.”

She’s saved from answering when her mother comes striding into the sitting room, and Jon’s eyes snap down to his dinner.

Catelyn seems to take no notice of Jon. She has Rickon hitched on her hip, and as she looks around the room, she only says, “Where is Arya?”

“I don’t know.”

She clucks her tongue and sets Rickon down on his feet so that she can inspect her pocket watch, which gleams in her hand as she prises it open. “We’re already running late.” She snaps the watch shut again and begins urgently patting at the pockets of her robe. “Lysa and Peter are expecting us.”

Sansa feels her heart stop. She tries to follow whatever else her mother says, she really does, but the words _Lysa and Petyr_ echo through her brain for a long, long moment, her throat already tightening around all the useless protests she might make. Inside her chest, something feels as if it might burst. A scream, perhaps, trying to break free. In her ears she can almost hear a soft voice rasping, _What have we talked about? Call me Petyr._

“Professor Baelish?” By some miracle, she keeps her voice even.

Catelyn pauses in what Sansa now recognizes is a search through her robe. She must be looking for the usual Stark Portkey, an intricately-embroidered handkerchief large enough that all seven of them can get a hand on it. This happens every time the whole family must go anywhere.

And this _is_ a family event. Why would Petyr Baelish be invited when Jon wasn’t? She releases a long, slow breath. She must’ve misheard.

But her mother shakes her head and says wryly, “He and Lysa have gotten quite close lately. Lysa told me they’re even talking about marriage.”

Marriage? Aunt Lysa had flirted with the professor at her father’s wake, she recalls that, but he’s made no mention of her aunt all term. Not once.

And if he’s in love with Lysa Arryn, why would he have done what he’d done?

She bites the inside of her mouth. What _had_ he done, really? Could she be overreacting? Could she have misunderstood him somehow? Everyone has always told her she’s too fanciful, too dramatic; as a little girl every happy moment was a dream come true and every bit of disappointment was a dagger to the heart. Arya says all she ever wants is attention. Joffrey thinks she’s weak and Cersei called her stupid. They might be right.

Maybe all the professor meant with that kiss was to show her simple affection — the affection warranted by his proximity to her family, a friend of her mother, perhaps her one-day uncle. He was sorry she’d lost her father. He knew how it had wrecked her. He wanted to let her know that he could be there for her, not a father, precisely, but a paternal figure of sorts. Father had pecked her on the lips when she was younger. There was nothing wrong in that. And hadn’t Petyr even said that under different circumstances she might have been his daughter?

Maybe what he had done was familial and harmless and she’s the one who twisted it around. Maybe.

But she remembers his thin, smirking lips, and the heavy weight of his hand on her knee, and the heat from the fire making her face burn. The wine had left her so slow, so fuzzy. She can still feel his mouth on her, nothing like the brief and innocent peck of a father. She shudders.

No. She’s not the twisted one. She knows what he wanted.

With a little hum of satisfaction, Catelyn pulls the handkerchief out of an inner pocket and holds up it triumphantly. “There we go.” Her brow wrinkles for a moment. “What was I saying? Oh, yes. It’ll be nice to see Petyr. He was always like a little brother to me.” 

Her smile then, that is what breaks Sansa’s heart. It is a faint smile, but sincere. And there are so few things left that make her mother smile.

Sansa can never tell her what happened with Petyr Baelish.

“I can’t go.”

She watches her mother’s smile slowly fade. “What?”

“I don’t feel well,” Sansa lies, pressing a hand to her stomach and groaning a little. “Honestly I haven’t felt well all day. I was hoping I’d be better by now, but — I’m not. And I just remembered how easily Robin gets sick. It wouldn’t be fair to risk exposing him to something.”

Bran’s watching Sansa with open confusion while Catelyn, caught between irritation and concern, only frowns. Rickon has that look on his face that means he might cry. 

It is Arya who saves the day.

She comes pounding down the stairs, her heavy boots rattling the pictures in their frames. As she careens around the corner and into the room, she shouts, “I’m ready, I’m ready, sorry,” and for a moment Sansa loves her little sister with every fiber of her being, because for a moment no one is looking at her. All eyes are on Arya, who, other than brushing her short hair back into a half ponytail reminiscent of Jon’s, seems to have put no effort into dressing up. Catelyn audibly sighs. Sansa takes the opportunity to sag against the back of a chair and try to look pitiful.

“Can we leave now?” Arya asks, as if she hadn’t been the one holding them up. “I’m starving.”

“Please,” Sansa says, grateful for her sister’s eagerness. When Catelyn turns to her again, she touches her stomach again and winces. “Give my love to everyone. I just need to lie down.”

“But you have to come,” says Bran, surprisingly earnest, and Rickon’s pout begins to tremble. 

Catelyn bites her lip. “Maybe we should just stay — ” 

“Go, _please_.” Sansa puts on that pathetic, pleading smile she’s showed the Lannisters too many times. “I’d hate it if I ruined it for everyone.”

“But if you’re ill — ”

“What’s going on?” Arya, who always seems to be able to spot a lie, narrows her eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

“My stomach hurts. I’m going to stay home and rest.”

Arya considers this for a moment, her lips thinning in an eerie imitation of their. But then her mouth sharpens to a grin. “Can I stay home too? I hate Aunt Lysa. She’s the worst.”

“ _Arya_ ,” Catelyn scolds, but Sansa can tell there’s a touch of amusement there too. “You’re coming. No, no negotiating, you are coming with me. You want to see Uncle Brynden don’t you? Then behave.” She turns to Sansa thoughtfully, her brows knitted. “We’re running late as it is. Sansa, if you really aren’t feeling well, go back to bed. Have Nan bring you some soup. We’ll be home by midnight.”

“I’ll be fine. Nothing a little sleep won’t cure.”

“Contact me immediately if you need me,” Catelyn says, and for the first time that evening her fierce gaze lands on Jon. He must feel it burning into him, but he doesn’t so much as glance up. “Rest.”

“I’ll be fine,” Sansa reassures again. “Now go.”

With a flourish of her wand, Catelyn levitates the handkerchief so that it lies flat within everyone’s reach and mutters the words to bewitch it. It’s as familiar a sight as any Sansa has seen, and Sansa’s siblings, well-trained by now, each obediently stretch one finger out.

“All at once now,” says Catelyn, “three, two, one,” and then they’re gone, flung through space, off to the cliffs of the Eyrie where the wind howls like wolves.

When she turns away from the spot from which they disappeared, she finds Jon watching her. She can’t help but think he looks like he caught her cheating on an exam or sneaking around after curfew. He’d been a prefect, she remembers. He’d been startled that he’d been selected, but he’d worn his badge proudly.

“So,” she says. Her cheeks burn under the intensity of his gaze. “I guess I should get to bed then.”

“You’re not sick.” It’s not a question. 

She opens her mouth but there’s nothing to say.

Scrubbing a hand through his hair, he sighs. His eyes never leave her. “Look. You can tell me to fuck off if you want, but … what the hell was that all about?”

* * *

He fixes her a plate of the same leftover curry he’s eating, which he says he picked up in London after work the other day, and when she asks warily whether it’s spicy, he laughs. “It’s mild,” he confesses. “Mild as you can get. Don’t tell anyone. It’s my dirty secret. My friend Tormund, he’s from work, he’d have my balls if he knew.”

She snorts and digs in.

They’re both sitting cross-legged in front of the hearth, where Rickon had sat reading his comic books that evening in November. She balances a plate on her lap, while he nurses a bottle of beer, and for a long time they are silent.

Sansa leans closer to the fire. She’d changed out of her dress right away, feeling foolish in her party frock and her grandmother’s earrings, as if the very sight of them might reveal her naive hopes for the evening. She’s in pajamas now. Instead of Robb’s old shirt she found a matching pajama set that Jeyne gave her for her birthday some years back. They’re a lovely shade of robin’s egg blue and just a hair too thin to be entirely comfortable in the winter, but the fire keeps her warm.

“So,” he says as she scrapes the last of the curry into her mouth. She can feel him watching her as she eats. “You said you’d talk once you got some food in you.” He prods her arm with the butt of his bottle. “Want a beer first?”

“No.”

“Wine?”

She wrinkles her nose. “No.”

“Tea?”

“I’m all right, Jon.”

“All right.” He leans back on his arms, trying to seem casual, but his obvious inability to stop worrying is almost comical.

“I can hear you thinking,” she says.

“You don’t have to talk to me.” He glances sideways at her, and the corner of his mouth twitches. “I just keep thinking, your father’s ghost would come back and haunt me if I don’t look after you. After all of you, I mean.”

“It’s really nothing. I just didn’t want to go. Arya’s right. Lysa’s the worst.”

“But you got all dressed up and everything.” He clears his throat and takes another swig of beer. “I hope it’s not ‘cause of me. Last time you were here, when we talked about your mother’s parties … I wasn’t trying to upset you. It’s all right that I wasn’t invited.”

She sets her plate on the floor beside her, staring into the fire. She doesn’t want to watch him drink more beer, doesn’t want to watch his throat working, or the way one lock of hair has fallen across his forehead. She doesn’t want to watch him pretending it doesn’t make him angry.

“It’s not all right,” Sansa says. “It never was. But that’s not why I didn’t go.”

“Oh.” He lapses into an awkward silence, and she thinks that’s the end of it, but then he says, “Then does it have something to do with Petyr Baelish?”

She schools every muscle in her body not to react. “What does Professor Baelish have to do with anything?”

“C’mon, I’m not an idiot. It was her saying he’d be there that upset you, wasn’t it?” 

“I’m not _upset_.”

His tone, if possible, grows even gentler. “He’s the one who found you, wasn’t he, in Diagon Alley after … ”

_After I watched my father die and could do nothing to stop it._

“Yeah.”

“I can understand not wanting to see him around after that. Bad memories and all.”

She ought to stay silent, allowing him to think he’s figured it out, but when she meets his earnest gaze the words tumble out: “What do you think of him?” Her cheeks heat up. “I mean, what did you think, when you were at school?”

“I dunno. I didn’t really think about him. I was too busy trying to get Thorne off my ass.” He squints at her. “Why? Did something happen at school?”

“He … ”

She looks down at her fidgeting hands, too ashamed to say it. _He kissed me_. And she let him. Just as she’d let Joffrey.

She is so tired of being weak.

The thought of Joffrey gives her an idea, though, and when Jon says, “He what?” she finds it easy to say, “He’s head of Slytherin, remember? And Joff’s a Slytherin. I think he’s turned Baelish against me.”

Jon scowls, sitting up a little straighter. “Is that little shit bothering you?” The incensed rumble of his voice surprises her.

“No,” she lies quickly, “not really. I’ve just noticed that my Transfiguration grades have gotten worse and worse ever since we broke up. I’m just being silly.”

He still seems doubtful, a frown tugging at his lips, but he nods. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry. You should be able to be with your family on Christmas Eve.”

At that, she nudges his shoulder. “I _am_ with my family on Christmas Eve.”

She can’t understand the expression he turns on her, the way his gaze is so soft and so open, and yet so sad too. He heaves a sigh, and when he smiles, it doesn’t reach his eyes.

* * *

Later, Sansa curls up in the armchair by the fire to read her book. She’s only got a couple of chapters left, detailing the immediate aftermath of the war, and when she comes across a photograph of her own father she can’t help the startled laugh that escapes her. He looks so _young_. More boy than man, beardless and lean, but the unshifting sober expression he gives the camera is exactly the same as it was in later years. When this picture was taken, he would’ve been a new husband, a new father, but newly orphaned too. Father dead. Brother dead. He had to grow up too fast.

“What are you reading?”

Sansa glances over to the sofa where Jon has stationed himself, poring over the papers he’d set aside earlier. He’s wearing his reading glasses, and every now and then she’s noticed him pinching the bridge of his nose before exhaling a long sigh. She doesn’t envy him his work. It must be miserable business.

“It’s called _Fire and Blood_ ,” Sansa says, flipping the book over so Jon can see the front cover. “Your friend Sam recommended it to me, actually. It’s about the war.”

“Why would you want to read about that?”

She shrugs. “It seems important. Father fought in it.” He still seems skeptical, so she adds, “It’s a lot more interesting than you’d think. And sad. So many innocent people died. Aerys Targaryen burned Muggles alive in the Ministry! He killed my grandfather and my uncle, you know that. I can’t stop thinking about it. And poor Elia Martell, she was the wife of Rhaegar Tar — ”

“I know who she was,” says Jon gruffly. “I don’t want to talk about this, Sansa.”

She blinks. “You were the one who asked, but fine. Why don’t you tell me what you’re working on, then. What are you brooding over?”

“Nothing,” he says, in just the way someone would say it when they mean the exact opposite of _nothing_. He seems to realize his error, because after a moment he clears his throat and in a more subdued tone adds, “Really. It’s nothing.”

“ _Nothing_ seems to be rather troubling.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You’re one to talk. You can still tell me why you didn’t want to go to dinner, you know.” 

“I did tell you. And you’re trying to change the subject.”

“I shouldn’t talk about it, Sansa.” He glances down at the parchment and shakes his head. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

When he looks at her again, the pain is so plain in his face that he doesn’t even need to say it. She already knows.

“It’s about Father and Robb, isn’t it?”

“I can’t talk about it, Sansa.”

“You can’t talk about it?” Her heart thumps furiously in her chest as she climbs to her feet, book forgotten. “You won’t talk about it, you mean.”

How dare he keep this from her — from all of them. It has been ages and ages of waiting, knowing nothing, and now Jon has answers that he refuses to share. She’d been stupid enough to believe that Jon was trustworthy. That Jon didn’t lie. But if he won’t tell her even _this_ ...

“That’s not fair,” he says.

“I deserve to know what you know.” 

“ _Sansa_ — ”

“We haven’t heard anything from the Ministry in _months_. I’ve been going mad trying not to think about the fact that their killers are still out there, and now I learn you know — ”

He rises to his feet too, starting toward her. “I know _what_? They’re still open cases. I don’t have any answers for you.”

“I want to know.”

“ _I’m_ not even supposed to know!” He clenches and unclenches his left hand. “Look, I got my hands on copies of files I’m not supposed to have,” he says, approaching her slowly, “and they’re filled with bloody awful details I don’t want you to see.” 

Heedless of his warning, Sansa steps even closer, close enough that his breath stirs the wisps of hair framing her face. “He was my father, Jon.”

“I know that.”

“Robb was my brother.”

“And what do you think he was to me?” he snaps. “What do you think they both were?”

“Please. They were yours too, I know they were, but they were also mine. I have to know.” She takes his hand in her own and squeezes it hard. “Please tell me.”

Jon doesn’t look at her. His eyes have dropped to where she’s touching him, and she wonders for a moment if he will tear himself out of her grasp, but all he does is sigh. Then he nods.

Apparently it was his friend and fellow Auror, Tormund, who got Jon copies of the files. “If anyone finds out, they’ll suspend him. I’m not allowed to work the case, I’m not even allowed to ask. I’m too personally involved.” He swallows, eyes darting over to where she’s seated herself, cross-legged on the sofa. “This is only about Robb. Jeor Mormont, the head Auror, he’s working Ned’s case himself. It’s too high profile for anyone I know to be on it, and the details are all being kept top secret.”

He sits down at the far end of the sofa and picks up the file. “I’m not showing you this, but I’ll tell you what it says.”

“I can handle it, Jon. Stop trying to protect me.”

“You have to trust me. You don’t want to see this. There are photographs. Auror reports.”

Photographs. She remembers Joffrey’s taunt: _Did he look handsome when you saw his body? Did you even notice the difference?_ But Sansa never saw the body. No one could undo the transfiguration on his head, no one could make him look like Robb again, so Mother had him cremated and they buried his ashes beside Father’s body.

“You’re right, I don’t want to see,” Sansa admits. “I don’t want to remember him like that.”

“I’ll tell you what I can.”

“Thank you, Jon.” She’s close enough she can smell the spice of his soap, and the hint of pine that always clings to him. And a little hint of dog too. “You’re a good man, you know. Father would be so proud of you. He _was_ so proud of you.”

He ducks his head. “No.”

“He was. He _was_.” She steels herself. “So tell me what you know about Robb.”

“There are still a lot of questions.” He shifts in place, and the way he’s holding himself changes too, a little straighter, a little less shy. This, she realizes, is Jon the Auror. “We don’t know why Robb went out that day. Tormund thinks maybe he’d gotten some tip and went out to follow up on it.”

“Where did he go?”

“The Twins. An old manor that’s sitting east of London, on the Thames. Magic, of course. It was used as a safehouse for the rebellion during the war, but no one’s been using it for years. Not officially, at least.”

“Why would he have gone there?”

“Don’t know. To talk to someone, maybe. Whatever it was … Robb broke protocol by not telling me.” He scrubs a hand through his hair, then over his face. “Once the distress signal went out, I got there as fast as I could but … ”

Somehow Sansa has never imagined how it must have been for Jon that day — to Apparate to the side of his friend, his _brother_ , and find only a mangled corpse. And still Jon had found the strength to come home and tell her, tell them all, what had happened. He’d had the strength to hold onto her even as she cursed him and blamed him and wished it had been him instead.

She brushes away her tears before they can fall.

“Jon,” she says, leaning across the distance to grip his hand. She brushes her thumb over the hard ridges of his knuckles. “I’m sorry.” She presses her forehead to their joined hands, hiding her face. “I’m so sorry.”

He breathes her name and she looks up to find him staring at her with wide eyes. 

“After Father … I would wish every day to forget that I’d been there. That I’d seen him like that. Seen him _die_. Murdered. I couldn’t stop seeing it. I still can’t.” She squeezes his hand even tighter. “I am so sorry you had to be the one to find Robb.”

He averts his eyes and murmurs, “They’re right not to let me work the case.”

“But you still wish you could?”

“I do.”

She extricates herself from him, wiping at her eyes again. “So do those files say if there any suspects? Has Tormund figured anything out?”

Stiffly, Jon nods, but he doesn’t look at her. She’s embarrassed him with her tears. They have never had this sort of relationship.

She scoots back to her end of the sofa and waits for him to tell her what he does know.

Instead, he asks, “Have you seen Theon lately?”

“Theon?” She tries to think. 

Robb’s best friend from Hogwarts, Theon Greyjoy has been constantly underfoot since the time Sansa was nine years old. He’d been a handsome, mischievous boy who’s grown into a handsome, mischievous man, though as far as Sansa has been able to tell, his life post-Hogwarts has been little more than a series of jobs he doesn’t care about and crashing at Robb and Jon’s flat for months at a time.

“I haven’t seen him for ages,” she says at last. “Not since … since Robb’s funeral, I guess it would be.”

But Jon’s frown deepens. “Sansa, he wasn’t at Robb’s funeral.”

“What? Of course he was. Robb was his best friend. He must’ve been there.”

True, she cannot picture him at the service or at the wake. She cannot remember him giving a eulogy or telling any stories. She cannot even remember him hugging her or offering his condolences. But that day had been a blur. She remembers very little of it.

“He wasn’t there. He was at your father’s funeral, but he didn’t show up to Robb’s. At first I assumed he’d just decided to get blind drunk instead, but apparently _no one’s_ seen him, not since before Robb was killed.”

No longer able to sit still, she begins to pace, trying to wrap her mind around what Jon is telling her. “Do you … ” She licks her lips. “Do you think he was hurt too?” She takes in Jon’s unhappy expression. “No. You can’t possibly think he was involved. That he’d hurt Robb?”

“I don’t know what I think. Theon was acting strange all summer. Bad moods, worse than usual. Fights with Robb.”

“He’s always been a bit of a prat, but he could never hurt Robb.” It’s unimaginable. It’s like suspecting Jon himself. Theon was practically another brother.

“The files say that Theon was seen meeting with a dark wizard in the spring. Ramsay Bolton.”

“ _Ramsay Bolton_?”

She remembers the Ramsay Bolton case. He’d been arrested for crimes against Muggles — horrible, disgusting crimes that made Ned Stark’s mouth harden in a very thin line and Sansa have nightmares for weeks — and then he had very publicly, and very embarrassingly, escaped Ministry custody before he could go to trial. Everyone assumed he’d fled the country if not the continent.

“Why would Theon ever meet with Ramsay Bolton? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“ _Theon_ … ” Her dry sob turns into a bleak laugh, and when Jon crosses over to her, she can only assume she looks unhinged. “Is there anyone left we can trust? Or are we to be betrayed and backstabbed by the whole of the wizarding world?”

“We have to trust each other,” he says, so soft it makes something inside of her feel painfully tender, and when he puts his arms around her, she leans in to his warmth and his scent. She tucks her head against his neck, inhaling him for a long moment, until at last he pulls back just far enough to press a kiss to her forehead. 

For the first time in a long time, she feels safe.

* * *

Around eleven, before the rest of the family comes home, Sansa hurries up to her room and returns with a large, flat box wrapped in silver paper and tied with a thick red ribbon. “Here,” she says. “For you.”

Jon’s lips part in surprise.

“It’s not a scarf,” she says. “Or gloves. I swear.” 

For the past several Christmases, Sansa has made a habit of gifting Jon either a winter scarf or a winter hat or a pair of mittens. It would’ve been the height of discourtesy to get him nothing, but she’d never known what he would’ve liked. She’d never cared to know. At the very least, winter gear was practical, if unsentimental. He still wears the mittens she bought for him two years ago.

“What … ?”

“Open it.” She hopes she doesn’t sound too eager.

His fingers deftly untangle the ribbon, and he folds the wrapping paper back in several slow, careful motions, as if she might wish to reuse it. When all that remains his the bare box, he looks at her once more for permission before he gently lifts the lid.

“Oh, Sansa.”

Lifting the robe from the box, he shakes it out in front of him so that he can look at it. She’d examined all of the men’s dress robes at the tailor shop in Hogsmeade to determine what the most fashionable cuts were these days, though she knew, of course, that Jon wouldn’t want anything flashy. It had taken her some time to figure out the right pattern. She’d sewn her own formal robe for one of the Ministry events she’d attended with Joffrey, but the men’s style was quite different. Still, she thinks her effort turned out rather well.

“Do you like it?” she can’t help but ask.

Instead of answering, he runs his hand along the fine black wool and traces his fingers over the embroidery at the collar. She’d wanted something simple yet elegant, so she’d stitched a row of weirwoods along the line of collar, with branches of pale gray and dark copper leaves. She’d added hidden silver clasps that could fasten all the way up, or, if he preferred to wear a bow tie or a cravat, he could leave the collar open. The sleeves were wide but not quite the bell-shape she’d added to her own robe, and around the cuffs and she’d sewn a subtle pattern of black vines to give it that extra bit of polish.

He blinks up at her. “You made this?” he asks. “For me?”

She refuses to be embarrassed. “I thought it was about time you had something decent to wear,” she says. “You’re bound to get invited to an important Ministry party one of these days. You can’t always show up everywhere looking like a Muggle.”

He breathes a laugh. “That so?”

“Yes, that’s so.” She does not know what wild impulse possesses her when she adds, “The Tyrells are having a New Year’s gala this year. You could wear it to that.”

“Sansa, I barely know the Tyrells. Garlan’s all right, but he was two years ahead of me. I’m pretty sure I’m not invited to their fancy holiday party.”

“You can come with me.”

He stares at her. Her every breath seems suddenly very loud in the silent room. So does his.

“I mean,” she adds hastily, “if you want to tag along. It could be fun. Instead of hanging out with a bunch of kids, you can actually socialize with some adults for once.”

He unfreezes, a little. “Like you?”

“Yes, like me.” She sticks out her tongue. “Besides,” she adds, “since Margaery’s hosting she’ll have to ignore me half the night. I’ll be so bored.”

His lips twitch into another smile. 

“And,” she adds, though she knows she’s probably gilding the lily at this point, “since technically it’s her grandmother’s party, I just know Joffrey is bound to be invited and I’d rather not be by myself while he parades his latest girlfriend around in front of me.” She rolls her eyes. “Like I care.”

That seems to do it, because he begins to nod. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll come,” he says. “If I don’t have to work.”

“Good. I’ll see if Arya wants to come too. She’s old enough not to completely embarrass me. And,” she adds before Jon tries to scold her, “she might actually have fun.” It might also be something of a peace offering, a detente after months (years, really) of tension. But it was a new year. They might as well turn over a new leaf.

“That’s a good idea,” he says, though he doesn’t sound so sure.

After an uncomfortable moment, she says, “So, where’s my present?” and raises her eyebrows expectantly. She bats her eyelashes innocently. “Santa says I’ve been good this year.”

He laughs, his first real laugh all night, husky and warm. “We’ll see about that.”

“Are you calling me naughty, Jon Snow?” She can’t hold back her own laughter when he blushes. 

“Your present’s not wrapped yet,” he tells her, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “What do you think I was planning to do while you were all gone tonight? You’ll just have to wait to get yours in the morning like everyone else.”

Pretending to pout, she says, “Fine. I suppose I can wait.” She glances at the dying fire. “I should probably go to bed now anyway. They’re bound to be back soon and Mother will be furious if I’m not resting like I said I was.”

“All right. Good night. And … thank you for the cloak. Really. It’s … it’s very ... ” The poor man has no clue what to say about a piece of clothing, she realizes. No wonder his attempt to compliment her dress was so awkward.

She puts him out of misery. “Happy Christmas, Jon.”

“Happy Christmas, Sansa.”


	8. New Year's Eve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At a New Year's Eve party hosted by the Tyrells, Margaery flirts, Sansa dances, Jon gets caught under mistletoe, and everyone tries to avoid Cersei Lannister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This gets a bit angsty (sorry!), but I'm hoping to get the next chapter up in the next couple weeks.
> 
> As a warning, Littlefinger does make an appearance this chapter and does continue to be the worst. I am pretty sure this will be the lowest point in terms of that plot, though.

“Darling, there you are!” 

Margaery saunters over to Sansa’s side, her lips curved into a catlike smile as she deftly snags two flutes of champagne from a server. Taking care not to spill the drinks, she leans in and air-kisses each of Sansa’s cheeks.

“Nice to see you, Margaery,” Sansa says, unable to stop herself from adding, “And so much of you.”

As the granddaughter (and, in all the ways that matter, true heir) of the hostess, Margaery will be expected to flutter around the ballroom all evening, making introductions and flattering guests, drawing the whole room’s attention with her beauty and wit — but in her sparkling semi-sheer gown with its neckline that plunges to her navel and the slit that reaches halfway up her thigh, everyone would be looking at her anyway. Sansa is half admiring, half terrified. It is a daring, precarious ensemble, and it looks as if one stiff breeze could send it flying off of her. But Sansa knows that Margaery leaves nothing to chance: every thread, every bead, will be charmed to fit perfectly, and to lay precisely as Margaery wishes it to. It won’t move a hair until Margaery allows it.

“You look so lovely!” Margaery says warmly, pressing one of the champagne flutes into Sansa’s hand. “I knew that dress would suit you better than it ever did me.”

“Thank you. And really, you look stunning.” She gives Margaery another once-ever: impossible dress, intricate updo, stiletto heels and all. “Literally.” She nods toward where a few of the gawky young servers whom Olenna must’ve hired for the night stare wide-eyed and slack-jawed at Margaery. “I think you’ve put them in a trance.”

With an airy laugh, Margaery takes a sip. “That’s the idea.”

Sansa’s own dress does not have quite the same effect, which is perhaps why Margaery, having little use for the undramatic, was so eager to lend it to her. 

In an ideal world, Sansa would’ve at least had the chance to shop before the gala, perhaps even make something by hand, but things being as they were, she had instead decided to wear the same silver-gray dress she’d worn to her family solstice party two years earlier. When she’d written a letter to Margaery telling her as much, however, she’d received a near-instant reply insisting that Margaery had something _just perfect_ for her. She’d owled the parcel straight over.

To Margaery’s credit, it’s a beautiful dress. 

True, Sansa doesn’t wear pink much anymore, especially not in such a pale shade, but she can’t deny she likes the sweetheart neckline and the ruched bodice, not to mention the romantic flounce of the skirt. It’s strapless too, and makes her neck look terribly long. She wonders now if she perhaps ought to have worn a necklace, but she’d opted for a bracelet instead. Her new bracelet. 

Self-consciously, she slides her forefinger between the delicate silver chain and the thin skin of her wrist — but Margaery doesn’t comment on her choice of jewelry. 

“I’ve added your plus one to the guest list,” Margaery tells her. “I can’t believe you gave Jon Snow a pity invite.”

“It’s not a pity invite.” Sansa takes a deliberate sip of champagne before continuing nonchalantly, “It’s more of a thank you for doing so much for Rickon. Jon’s always looking after him these days. I don’t think he’s got much time for his social life anymore. It’s sad.”

“Honestly, I wasn’t aware he ever had a social life, other than following Robb everywhere.” Margaery winces. “Sorry.”

“You’re allowed to mention him. But you are wrong about Jon. He’s even got a girlfriend, I think.”

“Ooh, juicy. And I take it you weren’t able to convince the little beast?” 

“Arya was offended I even asked.” 

This is not precisely true. More than anything, Arya had been perplexed by the invitation, even a little suspicious, and she seems to have ultimately decided Sansa meant it as a joke. In the end she told Sansa she planned to attend the party hosted by Elia Sand, the Gryffindor quidditch captain, and her seven sisters. In Sansa’s imagination, if Arya had accepted her invitation, they woud’ve spent all day getting ready together, trying on clothes and shoes, Arya letting her do her makeup. They would’ve laughed and made up, and Sansa might’ve ribbed Arya about all of her little boyfriends and Arya would’ve found a way to be herself without being cutting. It would’ve been _fun_. But even Sansa knows that’s all just a fantasy.

“It’s probably for the best,” she says. “We’d probably just end up pulling each other’s hair out in front of the entire Wizengamot.”

With a sympathetic click of her tongue, Margaery says, “I don’t envy you. Brothers are so much easier.”

Before Sansa can reply, Margaery’s attention catches on someone across the room — an old man Sansa recognizes after a moment as Pycelle, a white-bearded wizard who’d once been an advisor to Minister Baratheon and one of Father’s coworkers. The few times he’d spoken to Sansa, he’d always leaned in far too close, his bad breath tickling her face. She’d never liked him.

Margaery fixes her fuschia-lipsticked grin in place, sharp but friendly; she knows how to play nice with men like Pycelle without letting them walk all over her. “I have to go do my duty,” she says, rolling her eyes apologetically. “I feel terrible abandoning you. Will Jon be here soon?”

“Don’t worry. He had work until six, and he needed a little time to freshen up, but he’ll be here.”

“You won’t be positively bereft without me?”

“Always,” Sansa says. “But I’ll survive. Go on. I’ll find you later.”

As soon as Margaery leaves her side, Sansa allows her smile to fade and glances toward the main entryway. People are still mulling in — it’s early, barely past seven. There’s plenty of time.

When Jon told her two days ago that his supervisor had scheduled him to work New Year’s Eve, she’d been a bit disappointed, but part of her had been relieved too. As much as she’s enjoyed her burgeoning friendship — or whatever it is — with Jon, she’s also found it utterly confusing. It confused her that evening he held her and pressed a comforting kiss to her forehead, and it confused her when on Christmas morning he made her favorite French toast with extra cinnamon and fresh strawberries, and it confused her when he handed her his gift wrapped in brown paper and said nervously, “If you hate it, it’s fine. I can return it. I just wasn’t sure … ”

It had confused her most of all when she’d opened the small package to find a fine bracelet, with a chain so thin it was soft as thread and a single charm, a gleaming silver snowflake so intricate that it almost might have been real.

In the past, Jon’s gifts have been thoughtful (more thoughtful, she will admit, than the ones she has given him), but for the most part they’ve been unexceptional: books and art supplies and once a new radio after she accidentally obliterated hers while practicing for her O.W.L.s The only people who have ever given Sansa jewelry before are her mother, and Joffrey, and Petyr Baelish.

“Do you hate it?” he’d asked warily, watching as she lifted the bracelet from the box.

“No,” Sansa found herself answering. She held the delicate chain up to the light. “No, not at all. It’s gorgeous.”

“Sam Tarly, his wife Gilly makes jewelry. She’s got her own shop and everything. I was over for dinner one night and Sam was showing me her stuff. I saw this one and I, uh, I thought of you.”

 _He thought of me_.

She has told herself that it is no different from how he is with Arya and the boys. He thinks of them when they are not around, and will stumble across things that remind him of them. He sends Arya little gifts all through the year simply because she is on his mind. All of her siblings received Christmas presents this year from Jon that had made their faces glow with delight. Really, this is just the same. It is.

(So why does the bracelet feel so conspicuous on Sansa’s wrist?)

Then, just this morning, Jon pulled her aside after breakfast and said that if she still wanted him to come to the party, he could swing by after work. He’d actually asked his coworker to cover the end of his shift, as if he _wanted_ to be there with her.

There’d been nothing else to do but to swallow her confusion and say with a smile, “Perfect. I’ll make sure you’re on the list.”

She waits by the wall, nibbling hors d'oeuvres and scanning the faces of the other guests for anyone familiar. The Lannisters are here. She spots them right away, her stomach clenching at the sight of their golden heads, but they keep to the other side of the room for now, making conversation with the Tyrells and a couple of Footes, an old but small purebood family who’ve been Lannister lackeys for decades. Sansa almost laughs when she realizes Joffrey is trying to chat up Margaery, his chest puffed out proudly. There’s no chance of that happening. Margaery knows what he is. 

Soon the Martells arrive. Doran Martell is a legend for authoring dozens of spellbooks but he never shows up to anything. She understands why now. Elia Martell was his sister. If she were him, she wouldn’t want to see the children of Tywin Lannister either. 

Oberyn Martell, Elia’s other brother and the head of Gryffindor, is here though. He must not have the same luxury of avoiding such an important family as the Lannisters. He looks dashing in his shimmering golden robe, and his paramour, Ellaria Sand, wears a complicated, bejeweled headdress that glitters with the light of the chandelier. Her lipstick is dark, nearly black, and even from across the room, Sansa can see the contempt with which she regards the Minister of Magic upon their greeting. For her part, Cersei doesn’t seem to much like Ellaria or Oberyn either.

By all rights there also ought to be some friction between Arianne Martell, Oberyn’s niece, and Willas Tyrell. It was in a game against Arianne’s team, the Sunspears, that Willas had been injured. But when the former rivals come face to face, they embrace good-naturedly. More surprising still, when Arianne approaches Garlan, he wraps his arms around her waist and starts snogging her with considerable enthusiasm.

Sansa watches with interest. She can’t recall Margaery telling her anything about these developments, but then again, she hasn’t been particularly attentive lately. Her own life has proven too great a distraction.

She shakes her head. There’s nothing to do for it now. She’ll just have to ask Margaery about Garlan and Arianne later.

“Truffle, miss?”

A server holds out a platter of chocolate truffles speckled in goldleaf. Thanking her, Sansa takes one. It practically melts in her mouth. A few minutes later another server offers a lemon mousse that has Sansa moaning around her spoon. Whatever else she might say about this party, the food is superb. Just as she’s begun scanning the room for the plate of petit fours that she know is going around, she hears a voice say, “Little Sansa Stark, can that be you?”

She turns.

“Harry. I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Harry Hardyng stands before her, handsome as ever in a forest green cloak, smiling that dimpled smile of his that she once found so charming. “It _is_ you,” he says. “You’re looking awfully grown up, Sansa. How long has it been?”

“A few years now.” 

She’d had a terrible crush on Harry before she dated Joffrey, but he’d been a few years older and hadn’t given her the time of day. By the time she and Joffrey broke up, he’d graduated — and by then, she knew his reputation anyway. He always had a girlfriend, sometimes two, and though she never heard even a whisper that he was ever deliberately cruel, he was notoriously careless with girls’ feelings and had left more than one of Sansa’s classmates heartbroken.

He’s giving her an appraising look now, his eyes dipping unsubtly down to her cleavage.

“How are you, Harry?

“Better, now that I’ve run into you.” He says it so smoothly that she suspects it’s not the first time he’s said it tonight.

Before Sansa can call him on it, however, two dark-haired women come bustling over to Harry’s side, one of them linking her arm possessively through his. “ _There_ you are,” she says cooly. “What are you doing?” Her attention glides over to Sansa, and at once her chilly demeanor fades. “Sansa!”

“Hi Myranda,” Sansa greets. She smiles at the other woman. “Mya. It’s great to see you.”

Mya pulls her in for a hug first, a brief but affectionate squeeze, and then Myranda, releasing her grip on Harry, crushes Sansa against her ample bosom. Sansa’s afraid she’s going to wrinkle the black frills of Myranda’s dress, but Myranda doesn’t seem to care.

“I haven’t seen either of you in so long,” Sansa says. “What are you doing here? Weren’t you living in France?”

Myranda Royce tosses her long curls over her shoulder. “I moved back a few months ago.” Somehow she looks hardly any different than when she was fifteen, still petite and buxom, with all the confidence of a woman twice her age and all the presence of one twice her height. “Got a job with the Ministry, in the Department of International Magic Cooperation. Puts me closer to Harry, too. He works at Gringotts.”

Gringotts. She hasn’t been to Diagon Alley since her father died.

Pushing the thought from her mind, Sansa asks, “Oh, are you two … ?”

Myranda nods, practically glowing, but Harry seems less happy. Then again, Sansa suspects he’s the sort of man who is never happy with what he has.

“What about you, Mya?”

“Mya’s about to be a superstar.”

“ _Randa_.”

“Oh, shush, it’s hardly a secret. Mya’s going back to Quidditch.”

Sansa turns to Mya, whose bright flush looks less like embarrassment than pride. “That’s wonderful. Your arm’s all right?” 

She’d read in the paper all about Mya Stone’s injury in her rookie year that hadn’t healed quite right, and how it sent her promising Chaser career to a grinding halt before it had really begun. Arya, who quite admired Mya, was morose for days when she heard.

“Finally healed,” Mya says. “Full recovery. Had to find a bloody _incredible_ healer in Japan to do it, you wouldn’t believe the hassle.” Her grin is infectious. “The Cannons want me back, but the Sunspears are recruiting too. I’d love to play with them.”

“Did you see Arianne Martell’s just over there?”

Mya sheepishly scratches a hand through her short black hair. “I know. I’m trying to work up the nerve to talk to her. I’m sure she’d remember me from school but … ” She laughs. “ _Anyway_. Enough about me. What about you? Still at Hogwarts, right? How are you?”

Harry snorts before Sansa can say anything. When they all look at him, he pauses halfway to bringing his champagne glass to his mouth and rolls his eyes. “Her father just died, Mya.” Taking no notice of the rigid expression of horror that appears on Mya’s face, he continues, “And her brother.” He takes a swig of the champagne. “I’d wager she’s not great. She does look very pretty though,” he adds with a wink.

“Oh.” The color has drained from Mya’s face. “Oh, shit. Sansa. That was stupid of me.”

“It’s all right. Really.”

“I can’t believe I forgot, even for a second. I cried for days about Robb,” she says. “I swear I did.”

“We all did,” puts in Myranda.

Harry’s expression clearly says that he didn’t, but he lifts his glass in a mock toast and says, “To Robb and Eddard Stark.” He clears his throat and, more sincerely this time, says, “I _am_ sorry for your loss, Sansa. My dad died two years ago.”

She looks at him with surprise. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.”

He just shrugs.

Mya squeezes Sansa’s arm, telling her, “I don’t know if you remember, but Robb and I dated for about a month when we were at school, before we realized how much better we got along as mates. He’s still the nicest boy I’ve ever dated though. And the handsomest. And your father — everyone loved your father.”

Myranda nods. “My mother _always_ said Ned Stark was the only good man in Robert Baratheon’s administration. He should’ve been Minister, really.”

Sansa does all of the things you are supposed to do when people say kind things about your loved ones who have died. She smiles, or at least she tries to. She thanks them, somewhat mechanically. She endures their pity.

Then, out of the corner of her eye she catches a glint of sparkling, near-nude skin, not far away. Margaery. She’s chatting animatedly with a blonde girl whose hair falls in waves down to her waist. Margaery is gesticulating with both hands and letting out occasional ringing laughs that Sansa knows to be genuine, and it would be terribly rude to interrupt but Sansa can’t stand the look on Mya and Myranda’s faces a moment longer.

“I’m sorry, I’ve just spotted our hostess,” she says. “I really should speak with her. It was so good to see all of you.” She lets them all hug her once more, even Harry, and then she dashes off with a wave.

Margaery doesn’t seem to notice her as she approaches, too focused on the girl she’s determinedly flirting with. Sansa can only see the back of the girl: her golden hair and her garnet red skirt, but whoever she is, Margaery clearly likes her. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes shining. There’s a keen interest in Margaery’s face that Sansa hasn’t seen since Alys Karstark dumped her for Sigorn Thenn.

“You _must_ let me take you to Chez Roux,” Margaery is saying. “It’s the best French food you can get without crossing over to the continent. There’s an absolutely charming botanical garden just around the corner — you’d love it. We must go.”

The golden-haired girl giggles. “Can we?” she says eagerly.

“As soon as possible,” Margaery replies. “I’d love nothing more.”

Not wanting to eavesdrop any longer, Sansa clears her throat and catches Margaery’s attention. Luckily, Margaery doesn’t seem annoyed. Her smile is bright. “Sansa, hello dear. Don’t tell me Jon Snow’s stood you up.”

Sansa opens her mouth to say that she’s sure Jon will be here any moment — even though it’s nearly eight and she’s beginning to worry he’s forgotten about her — but then the golden-haired girl turns around, smile bright as sunlight, and Sansa is stunned into silence. She finds herself looking into the familiar green eyes of Myrcella Baratheon.

“Sansa!” Myrcella cries, throwing her arms around Sansa. “It’s so good to see you.”

“Hi,” Sansa finally manages. 

In the time Sansa has known her, Myrcella has always been every bit as kind as her older brother Joffrey has been cruel. She’s a fifth year, Sansa knows, the same as Arya, but something about her unfailing sweetness always made her seem a bit younger. Then again, Sansa never had much of a chance to befriend Myrcella, or even to get to know her better, because Joffrey disliked both of his siblings and forbade Sansa from spending time with them. Nevertheless, at the occasional Lannister-Baratheon family dinner, Sansa would end up being seated next to the girl, and they’d usually spend the evening giggling over their meals and gossiping about their professors. Last Sansa remembers, Myrcella had a terrible crush on Brienne Tarth, the Hogwarts flying instructor.

“I never see you at school these days,” Myrcella says, clasping Sansa’s hands. “You never come to Slytherin anymore! You know you can still visit even though you’re not dating Joffrey. Me and Margaery are _always_ saying we wish you’d come by, aren’t we, Marge?”

“We are,” Margaery says lightly.

“That’s.” Sansa clears her throat, shooting a look at Margaery. “That’s very nice of you.”

Still very earnest, Myrcella says, “I know Joffrey can be an arsehole, but the two of us can still be friends. He doesn’t get to have a say over that.”

“Hear hear.” Margaery lifts her glass. “It baffles me that the two of you are related. Doesn’t it just baffle you, Sansa? You’re the sweetest girl I’ve ever met.” Margaery turns a fond expression on Myrcella. “Sweet,” she says again, huskier, her hand reaching out to skim her palm across the open back of Myrcella’s gown. Myrcella flushes pink. “And beautiful.” 

Myrcella’s blush spreads from the roots of her hair all the way down her chest and Sansa, sighing, decides to make a retreat. She’s had a front-row seat to many of Margaery’s seductions, but few as ill-advised as this one. She doesn’t trust herself not to say something.

Before she can excuse herself, however, Myrcella straightens and, glancing across the crowd, says, “Oh, damn, I’ve got to run. Mother’s waving me over.”

Despite herself, Sansa follows Myrcella’s gaze to the other side of the ballroom and finds Cersei’s emerald eyes burning into her, every bit as terrible as she remembers.

* * *

Only after Myrcella is out of earshot does Sansa voice her thoughts. “You’re playing with fire,” she says. “This is reckless even for you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Sansa snorts and pinches the flesh of Margaery’s upper arm until she yelps: “ _Hey_.”

“Don’t play dumb, because I know you’re not. You know exactly what I mean. Are you really going after Myrcella Baratheon?”

“Why shouldn’t I? She’s beautiful, she’s clever.”

“Sure. But she’s a Lannister.”

Margaery rolls her eyes and takes a long drink — no longer champagne, but something clear and fizzy in a rocks glass. “I wouldn’t be dating her family.”

“Just like I wasn’t dating Joffrey’s family?” Sansa edges closer to Margaery, so that she has to meet her eyes. “Hey. I’m trying to warn you. You don’t want Cersei as an enemy, and if you seduce her daughter … she will definitely see you as an enemy.”

“But I like her, Sans.” The whine in Margaery’s voice is a surprise. “I’m not just trying to seduce her. I really like her, all right?”

“Since when?”

“This year. She turned up at Hogwarts this fall and — look at her.”

“There are other pretty girls, Margaery. Pretty girls, pretty boys, pretty anyones you want.”

“It’s not just that.” Margaery takes another, more desperate gulp of her drink. Vodka soda, if Sansa had to put money on it. “I’ve spent a lot of time with her this year. Everyone’s been so busy. Loras and Renly have become inseparable, it’s adorable and completely irritating. And you’ve been … distant.”

Sansa frowns. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, darling. After everything that’s happened, it’s understandable. But I’ve been spending more time with Myrcella and … ” She sighs heavily.

“You _actually_ like her?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. She’s wonderful, I’ll have you know.”

Sansa huffs a laugh. “She’s lovely, but it will be terrible mess. The messiest of messes.” She casts another wary glance over to where Cersei now stands with her arm around Myrcella’s shoulders, leaning close to tell her something. Probably to warn her off of all Tyrells and all Starks and basically anyone who isn’t a Lannister. “Are you really willing to deal with that?”

Margaery stays silent for a long time, expression unusually serious, but just when Sansa thinks she might answer, her lips curve into a smirk. “Speaking of messes.” Her voice is playful as she gestures toward the entryway with her drink. “Guess who finally showed up.”

* * *

The first thing Sansa thinks is that the dress robe looks good on him. Really, _really_ good. She wonders if he did a few alteration charms because it fits him better than she could’ve imagined.

He’s let his hair down for the night, the curls looking so soft that she knows he’s just washed them. His beard looks a little neater too, as if he’d trimmed it. And when he sees her, his smile is so gentle it makes her ache.

“You know you’re terribly late,” Margaery scolds the moment she drags Sansa over to greet Jon. “Sansa’s been waiting for ages. She was sure you stood her up. I thought she was going to cry.”

“ _Marg_ — ”

“I’m sorry.” A look of panic blooms across his face as he glances frantically between the two of them. “Edd was late ‘cause — well, ‘cause there’s always something going on with Edd, and so I didn’t get out of work until a quarter to seven, and … ” Only when Margaery starts to snicker does he seem to realize. “You’re teasing me.”

“You make it very easy, Jon Snow.”

“I guess that’s fair.”

He looks at Sansa again, as if to confirm that she’s not upset, and when she smiles at him, he ducks his head. When he glances up once more, it’s different: he’s taking her in properly. Yet his eyes don’t linger anywhere, not her breasts or her bare shoulders or her bracelet; it is only her face that he seems to catch him, her face which he just saw this morning. She wonders if her lipstick has worn off after too many truffles. She wonders if there’s something in her teeth.

“Wow,” he says finally. He blinks a few times. “You look … ” His eyes slide down her body once more. “Really nice.”

_Really nice?_

Sansa releases a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Thanks, Jon.”

“I must say,” Margaery says with an exaggerated leer. “You clean up pretty well.”

“I, uh. Thank you.” He clears his throat and focuses on Margaery. Admittedly, there is a lot of Margaery to focus on, and she looks quite a bit better than _really nice_ , but he does a good job keeping his eyes above her neck. 

“Thank you for having me,” he says. “I brought a gift.” To Sansa’s immense surprise, he brings out a small bouquet of flowers from behind his back and hands them to Margaery, who accepts them with a laugh of delight. But Jon is looking around the room, taking in the splendor. “That was stupid of me, wasn’t it?” Scratching the scar over his eyebrow, he says, “This isn’t that sort of party.”

The faint blush on his face is, frankly, adorable, so Sansa saves him from his misery. “Nonsense,” she says, shooting him a smile. “Mother always says it’s always good etiquette to bring a gift when you’re a guest in someone else’s house.”

“Besides,” says Margaery, plucking a winter rose from the bouquet and tucking it behind Sansa’s ear, “I love flowers. “ She tucks another blossom into her own cleavage. “If you ask me, you can never go wrong with them. Now, I’m just going to go pop these in some water. You two have fun.”

As Margaery retreats, Sansa can’t help but sneak a look over at Jon to see if he’s eyeing Margaery’s shapely and almost-visible backside, but he’s just fiddling with his cuffs, his eyes cast down.

“I am sorry I’m late,” he says finally, glancing up again with a pinched smile.

“It’s fine, Jon. Ignore Margaery.” She reaches for his hand. “Thank you for coming.”

He swallows, looking down at where she’s grasped him, then looks up again. “Of course.”

“Let’s get you a drink. It sounds like you had a long day at the office.”

“It wasn’t so bad, but I could’ve killed Edd when he sent a message saying he’d be late. Should’ve asked Grenn instead.”

“How many of you are there over at the office?”

Many had come to Robb’s funeral, but she’d barely noted them at the time, just a parade of men and women in dark robes who had failed to protect her brother. That’s not fair, she knows, but it’s how it had felt then.

“Loads.” He orders a drink at the bar and waits until it’s handed to him. “Thanks.” Turning back to Sansa, he cracks a smile. “And before you ask, aye, we’re all complete knobheads.”

“I never doubted it.” She notices Cersei Lannister weaving her way toward the bar and reaches for Jon’s elbow in order to steer him off to the side. If he notices who she’s avoiding, he doesn’t say anything. “You couldn’t pay me to work for the Ministry,” she says.

“That is usually how jobs work. They pay you.”

“Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.”

He hums, sipping his drink. “What do you plan to do? I’ve never asked.”

“After Hogwarts, you mean?”

He nods. 

“I don’t know.”

It’s not that she hasn’t thought about it. As a firstie, all she’d wanted was to find someone to marry by the time she graduated: married by eighteen, first child by twenty. That had been the entire plan. Running a great household like Casterly Rock would take her full-time attention anyway. Then, later, she thought about the Ministry; she’s administratively-minded and would be an asset in any department. But not with Cersei as Minister of Magic. She would never work for Cersei for as long as she lived.

“You’re amazing with a needle,” Jon says. “You could apprentice at Madame Malkin’s.” He laughs. “Hell, you could open your own shop and put her out of business.”

Yes, that had been another option, the one she’d been leaning toward all of last year. It’s what Margaery and Jeyne thought she should do. She would enjoy it, she’s sure she would. And yet … she cannot get excited about the prospect.

“I don’t know,” she says again, lowering her eyes so that he can’t see how stupid she feels. “With everything, it’s been hard to think about it.”

But he tips her chin up with his finger. “That’s okay, Sansa. That’s fine.”

She changes the subject. “How’d you know you wanted to be an Auror?”

His shakes his head and glances down at his drink, which he swirls for a few seconds. “I don’t think anything else ever occurred to me. I wanted to be just like your father. Just like Robb. I wanted to do good.” Rolling his eyes, he adds, “I was lucky, being raised with you all, and I knew I had to pay that back somehow. Make good. Make Ned Stark proud.” He rubs the back of his neck. “It’s embarrassing.”

“No, it’s very noble.” She pokes him the chest so that he’ll look at her again. “But you’re allowed to want things for yourself too, you know? You can think about yourself sometimes. Father would want that.”

“Oh, aye? You might want to take your own advice there.”

She breaks away from him with a dark laugh of disbelief. “Me? Anyone we know would be happy to tell you that I only think about myself. Just ask Arya.”

“Sansa.”

“Sorry.”

“Arya loves you.” He sighs. “And no one who knows you thinks you’re like that.”

She takes a deep breath, forcing herself to smile. Sometimes it so easy to find the things she hates about herself and pick at them like scabs. Sometimes it so easy to believe that they were right all along, Joffrey and Cersei, in their belief that she was worthless and insipid and small. But she is here at a beautiful party on New Year’s Eve, and Jon thinks she is a good person, and Margaery thinks she is a good person, and at this moment Sansa thinks she is good person too. Imperfect, always imperfect, but — 

But she is trying. She is trying so hard. That has to count for something.

“Come on,” she says to Jon, reaching for his hand. “Let’s dance.”

It takes some convincing to get him onto the dance floor. She pouts, she flutters her eyelashes, she calls him a coward. She waits for him to down the rest of his drink. Eventually, she tells him if he doesn’t want to dance with her, she’ll just go find Harry Hardyng and dance with him instead.

“Fine,” he grumbles.

“I didn’t realize you hated dancing so much.”

“Just worrying about you,” he says. “It’s your toes I’ll be stepping on.”

He’s more graceful than he gives himself credit for, however. He’s a little rigid at first, one hand carefully placed high on Sansa’s waist, the other clasped in her own hand. “Come a little closer,” she has to tell him, but he obeys, and when she lays her hand on his shoulder, he only tenses a little. But as Sansa eases Jon around the dance floor, he begins to loosen up. His shoulder drops into place. His hand on her waist grows softer, cupping the flesh of her hip. She hums along to the string quartet to help him keep the rhythm, and soon they are gliding and twirling and only occasionally stepping on each other’s feet.

“You’re wearing the bracelet,” he says after a while, glancing down at the hand he’s holding.

“I am.”

“You really like it then?”

“Of course. And you like your robe?”

“It’s perfect.”

She leans closer, tucking her chin over his shoulder, and she can feel his breath stutter out of his lungs. She closes her eyes, wanting nothing but to hear the music and feel the warmth of his body. He smells like soap. He smells like home.

His voice rumbles next to her ear: “You look beautiful, Sansa.”

“I’m not quite Margaery Tyrell, but — ”

“Hey.” His hand slides around her waist to rest on her lower back. “You’re beautiful.”

She smiles into his shoulder. “Thank you.”

They continue like that through the next song and the next, Jon’s hand splayed across her back, his breath stirring her hair. When she opens her eyes, she can see his pulse leaping in his throat.

Before the next song can start, he comes to a standstill.

“Listen, Sansa — ” Frowning, she lifts her head from his shoulder to look at him, and his eyes dart away from her questioning look. He clears his throat. “I’m not sure that this is … ” His dark gaze lands on her once more, and this time it stays, searching. The look he gives her is warmer than a fire on a snowy night.

His lifts his hand from her back, leaving a sudden chill spot on her spine, and with it he reaches for her face. She closes her eyes on instinct, nearly shivering when she feels his palm slide against her cheek, cupping the side of her face. She can feel his rough fingers against her ear, almost touching the soft petals of the rose Margaery tucked into her hair. She’d forgotten about it.

She opens her eyes again. All at once she can _feel_ her breath, heavy and rough in her throat, and the strange faltering beat of her heart. Her eyes flicker down to his lips. 

Oh.

Oh, shit.

She pulls herself out of his grasp. “I, uh.” She looks frantically around the room and thanks god for Margaery’s impossible-to-miss dress. “Oh, look, there’s Margaery. Let’s go see what she’s up to.”

“Wait, Sansa — ”

But she’s already walking away.

* * *

Margaery’s mood has soured since Sansa last spoke with her. When Sansa approaches, Jon trailing a few steps behind, she notices that Margaery’s downing her vodka soda a little too easily now, and her smiles don’t reach her eyes. 

When Margaery spots Sansa, she breaks away from the cousin she’d been making idle conversation with and takes Sansa by the elbow. “She’s a bloody nightmare,” Margaery says without any preamble. “You know I hate to call another woman a bitch, but — ”

Somehow Sansa knows she doesn’t mean her cousin.

“Cersei?”

“Don’t say _I told you so_.”

“She said something about Myrcella?”

“She didn’t have to.” Margaery swats a loose tendril of hair out of her eyes. “That _woman_. How she ever fooled anybody into thinking she’s not an absolute demon, I will never know.”

Sansa puts her arm around her friend. This, at least, is familiar territory. She’s spent years hating Cersei. 

“You don’t have to tell me.” She glances over to where Cersei stands, drinking her red wine and looking displeased at everything around her. “Come on. Let’s get some fresh air. And … I need a favor.”

Margaery listens to her murmured request, and after grabbing another drink, she slides past Sansa to where Jon stands hovering, brow furrowed in typical Jon fashion. Margaery links her arm through Jon’s. “Come on, Snow, Sansa and I want some fresh air and we need an escort.” He opens his mouth but doesn’t protest.

Margaery leads the way out of the ballroom, down a corridor, and out onto a large balcony that overlooks the rolling, snow-clad hills surrounding Highgarden. Sansa stays a few paces behind Margaery and Jon. She may have asked her friend to distract him for a moment while she gets her head on straight, but she won’t simply abandon him in Margaery’s hands. Not while Margaery’s been drinking like she has. That’s a recipe for disaster. 

Instead of foisting him off on Margaery, of course, Sansa should say something to him, try to pretend like everything’s normal. Better yet, simply tell him the truth. She got swept up in the moment and the music and the champagne — _definitely_ the champagne — and that’s why, for a second, half a second, really, she thought about kissing him. It was a fluke.

Instead, once they’re outside, she peels away from both Margaery and Jon to stand against the far ledge, leaning over the rail only a little further than is entirely safe. She focuses on the cold air filling her lungs. Breathe in, breathe out. She opens her eyes. The night sky, inky dark, glitters with starlight, the moon spilling silver across the horizon. Dimly she can hear the sounds of the party, laughter and music, and, further away, the hoots and trills coming from the Highgarden owlrey. Her skin no longer feels like it’s on fire where his hands touched her. She takes the flower from her hair and sets it on the ledge.

Behind her, she can hear Margaery and Jon’s voices, mostly Margaery’s, largely indistinct prattle that is clearly an effort to be cheerful. Margaery asks Jon something about his job, and he asks her something about her brothers, but Sansa doesn’t turn around until she hears Margaery say, acidic and sweet all at once, “Oh my, look at that. Mistletoe.”

 _That_ gets Sansa’s attention.

From the awning above Jon and Margaery hangs a single sprig of mistletoe, which might be part of the party decorations or might be left over from Christmas — or, just as likely, might’ve been hidden somewhere on Margaery’s person all along, though Sansa can’t imagine where. In the dim light she cannot tell if Jon is blushing, but she recognizes the mortified look on his face.

“Well, don’t be a coward,” Margaery says, tilting her face up toward him. “Kiss me.”

But Jon, wide-eyed, is looking at Sansa.

For reasons she cannot begin to fathom, when she opens her mouth the words that come out are, “Go on.” It’s a little hoarse but he definitely hears her. She clasps her hands together to keep them from shaking.

And though Jon raises his eyebrows, he nevertheless does as she says, ducking down to drop a chaste kiss on Margaery — who instantly winds her arms around his neck and draws him in more deeply. Sansa watches she sinks her fingers into the curls at the back of his neck. She watches as Jon’s hands settle on Margaery’s waist. She watches as he tilts his head to match Margaery’s movements, a little hesitant but not completely uncomfortable.

Finally Margaery pulls away with an exaggerated sigh and a flutter of her eyelashes. “Nice work, Snow. Guess you do have a social life after all.”

With that, Margaery gives Sansa a wink before she sashays away, drink in hand, leaving Jon staring at Sansa with befuddlement. There’s a smear of fuschia across his mouth.

Sansa forces her feet to move toward him. She tries to laugh. “You, uh. You’ve got.” She gestures vaguely at his lips and he scrubs at his mouth with the back of his hand, still looking a little shellshocked. 

_Margaery will do that to people_. It’s the first time in a long time Sansa’s felt so annoyed about that.

Whatever she expects him to say next, it isn’t this: “You must be freezing. Let’s go back inside.”

In the empty corridor, she does feel a bit warmer, and she finds it a little easier to find her voice again. “Sorry about Margaery,” she says, walking slowly. She’d rather none of Margaery’s guests overhear her talking about her friend; she’d hate for someone to mistake her frankness for criticism. “I know she can be a little too much sometimes. She loves to go wherever her whims take her.”

“It’s fine.”

“I mean,” Sansa continues, and her weak laugh sounds pathetic even to herself, “I doubt anyone’s ever been upset about Margaery kissing them.” She doesn’t look at him. “But I know you’ve got a girlfriend … ”

He stops walking. “What?”

She stops too. “You’ve got a girlfriend. Don’t you?” She remembers the unmoving picture on his mirror of that freckled girl with ginger hair. She’d looked like the kind of girl who’d never be caught dead in a pink strapless gown. She’d probably dress more like Margaery, unforgettable, or maybe like Mya, practical and sleek. “A Muggle. That’s what Robb said.”

“Oh.” Jon rubs a hand over his mouth. “I didn’t know he told you about her. We … we actually broke up months ago.” His gaze is fixed on the wall behind Sansa. “Before your father died.”

She exhales sharply. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. We weren’t right for each other. I loved her, but … ”

“But?”

He seems to deflate as he finally looks at her. “I lied to her every single day. I lied about my job, I lied about my family. I couldn’t tell her about magic, could I? Not until I _knew_ it was going to last.”

Sansa never thought about it that way. Falling in love with a Muggle had always seemed a bit romantic, an unlikely sort of love story. That’s how it had been for Jeyne’s parents. But to hide magic from someone you loved? To hide something so central to her whole life? Sansa doesn’t know if she could do it. She can’t imagine Jon doing it. She always thought he couldn’t lie, at least not very well.

“So you never told her?”

He winces, rubbing the back of his neck. “I did, actually. Last March. I wanted to ask her to live with me, but I couldn’t do that without telling her the truth.”

“And?”

“And she was furious. For good reason. I’d lied to her for almost a year and a half. How could she ever trust me again?” He lets out a long sigh, and Sansa wishes she knew how to comfort him. “I was supposed to report her to Muggle Relations, that’s the rule. But she promised she wouldn’t tell anyone about magic. Her word’s a damn sight more honorable than mine.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was so serious.”

Shrugging, he says, “That’s ‘cause I never talked about her. Too guilty, I s’pose. Only Robb ever met her.” He frowns. “And Theon.”

Theon. She’s tried her best not to think about him the past week — him, or Ramsay Bolton, or the horrible way that Robb died. She still can’t believe that Theon could have hurt Robb. Not intentionally, at least. But Theon’s always been careless, and if he was spending time with dark wizards …

She stamps the thought down. “Please, let’s not talk about him. And we don’t have to talk about your ex. We’re at a party. We’re meant to be having fun.”

“You’re right.” Part of her expects him to suggest they track down Margaery again, but all he does is grin. “How should we do that?”

She thinks a moment. “Have you tried any of the food yet? There’s a lemon mousse that’s just to die for.”

He follows her into the ballroom, hand light against her back, and she tries very hard not to think about the fact that what she’d wanted to say was _More dancing_.

* * *

She allows herself only one more glass of champagne, at least until midnight, but puts no such limit on her intake of sweets. Jon can barely hide his laughter as she piles her plate with cakes and chocolates, but when, at her insistence, he tries the lemon mousse, he makes such an obscene noise of pleasure that she fears she’ll never be able to forget it.

They find their way to one of the tables set up along the outskirts of the ballroom, and Sansa practically sprawls in her chair, hand on her very full belly. “I wonder how Arya’s party’s going,” she says.

“If something isn’t on fire by now, it’s no true Gryffindor party.”

“You’re all idiots,” she replies, but she’s giggling. She glances over and sees him smiling too, a real smile, teeth and everything. “Was Robb upset when I wasn’t a Gryffindor?”

He looks at her curiously. “‘Course not. He wanted you to be in Gryffindor ‘cause he wanted to keep an eye on you, but he was always proud you were a Ravenclaw. Bran too.” He tips back some of his drink — whisky, she thinks. It’s his third or fourth one. He sets the glass aside. “Surprised, though. He was surprised. I don’t know why. I told him — ”

“You told him?”

“I told him you weren’t for Gryffindor.”

“Because I’m not brave enough?”

“No.” He leans over a bit clumsily and grabs her hand. He’s probably drunk, and his palm is damp and cool from his drink, but she doesn’t care. “Sansa, no. Because even when you were just eleven you were smarter than me and Robb combined. And you liked learning. Do you remember how you begged your parents to send you to school years before you were allowed? You had that governess, Miss Mordane, but you were sure you were too advanced for her lessons.”

She groans. “No wonder you all found me so annoying.”

His hand tightens and she glances over to find him regarding her very seriously. “You weren’t annoying.” His mouth quirks. “No more than the rest of us. You were just different. That’s all right. We were all rough and tumble and broomsticks and pretend duels, but you liked to sing and make pretty things and tell stories. I liked that. I always did.”

“Thank you. And I guess you’re not _all_ idiots. Foolhardy, maybe.”

“Foolhardy. I’ll take it.”

“Brave, too,” she says. “Always brave.”

“Not always,” he replies quietly, letting go of her. He takes another drink.

With a wan smile, she excuses herself to the ladies’ room, saying she needs to reapply her lipstick, though in truth that last glass of champagne’s gone straight through her and her bladder feels ready to burst. After she uses the loo, however, she realizes she forgot her clutch, which holds her lipstick, at the table.

She rolls her eyes in the mirror. Well, god forbid Jon learns that she pisses. She’s only known him her whole life.

As she steps outside the restroom door, still smiling to herself, a cold hand clasps her by the upper arm. “I was wondering if I’d see you tonight, my dear.”

Sansa freezes, too surprised to stop Petyr Baelish from steering her a little further down the hall, his fingers biting into her. His ingratiating smile is familiar, but the way his gaze travels slowly down her body is not. Her stomach feels as if it’s in knots. 

“Professor — ”

He holds up a finger.

“Petyr,” she amends, glancing up and down the corridor in which she’s found herself. No one else is around. A blessing and a curse. She doesn’t want anyone to see her like this — she still remembers her shame when Tyrion Lannister came upon her and Joffrey outside the Great Hall — and yet perhaps a witness or two would prevent him from doing something like he did that night. 

She tries to imagine what he might want to hear. “I’m so sorry I missed you for Christmas dinner,” she tells him. “I was looking forward to seeing you.”

“I was very disappointed.” He edges closer, until his minty breath, a little sour with liquor, touches her face. “Are you feeling better now?”

“Much.”

He lays his hand on Sansa’s cheek for a moment, cradling her face like Jon did earlier except this touch only makes her go cold, her whole body like a wall of ice, and then his fingers slide down her jaw to the base of her throat. He swipes his thumb across her collarbone. “I’d hoped you’d wear the gift I gave you. Why didn’t you?”

Because it was back at Hogwarts, shoved into the bottom of her trunk. 

“That’s such a good idea,” she says. “You’re right. I’m so stupid, I should have thought of it. I knew this dress was missing something.”

He hums thoughtfully, his thumb still stroking along her collarbone, as if by tracing the shape of the necklace he can make it appear beneath his touch. “It was quite sad,” he murmurs, “seeing your mother. Grief has changed her.” At last he stops touching her, but the way he’s looking at her is almost worse. “But seeing you now … you have every bit of the beauty she once had, and more besides.”

He takes her face in both hands, tipping his mouth toward her, slow but deliberate, as if waiting for her to close the gap instead. She won’t do it. She won’t.

She should push him away — but what if he fights her? He’s been drinking. What if they cause a scene? She can just imagine what would happen if Joffrey or Cersei came upon them. She takes her N.E.W.T.s this year. Whatever she decides she wants to do after Hogwarts, she can’t afford for anyone to believe she didn’t earn her grades fairly.

She could just let him do it. Let him kiss her and perhaps it will be over in a moment. It was last time.

She steels herself, squeezing her eyes shut, but before his mouth can touch hers, he is gone — ripped away so violently that she can only gasp. She watches as Petyr Baelish is shoved up against the corridor wall.

“I’ll kill you,” Jon growls, his hand tightening around Petyr’s neck. Jon’s expression is thunderous, _murderous_ , and Sansa realizes with some horror that Petyr’s face has begun to turn purple. “You’re not fit to breathe the same air as her,” Jon is telling him, “you’re not — ”

“Jon!” She takes another deep breath to steady herself and hisses again, “ _Jon_. Let him go.” 

He turns to her, wild-eyed, as Petyr continues to gasp, his fingers scrabbling at the hand still closing around his throat. “I won’t — ”

“It’s not any of your business! Let him go!”

“But — ”

The sound of murmurs causes him to break off and they both turn at once to see that a small group has begun to gather at the end of the corridor, drawn by the noise of the men fighting. Petyr’s gasps are growing louder and more desperate with each passing second. In the crowd she recognizes Mya and Myranda. She recognizes Myrcella Baratheon. 

Her cheeks heat up. She will not cry. She _will not cry_.

“Jon,” she commands. “Let him go now.”

With a grunt, Jon releases Petyr, who falls into a crouch, panting heavily. His eyes glance up to find Sansa’s and she shivers. This is not over. She will pay for this, somehow.

Jon still won’t let well enough alone. He grabs Petyr by the front of his robes and drags his to his feet. “Touch her again,” he says, “and I’ll kill you myself.” 

She can’t watch this anymore. She won’t. Stumbling over her own feet, she turns in places and weaves past the gathered crowd as fast as she can, refusing to look into their faces. Refusing to see their judgment. 

Behind her, a voice calls, “Sansa! Wait!”

He’s faster than her, not slowed down by heels, and he manages to catch her arm. “Sansa, please. I’ve got your bag.”

When she glances over her shoulder, she finds he is indeed holding her clutch. He must’ve been bringing it to her when he’d seen her and Petyr. He must’ve known she’d want her lipstick.

She snatches at the bag, but he pulls it back, “Wait. Can we talk?”

She could scream. He wants to do this now? Here?

Fine. Frostily, she tells him, “He’s my teacher.” 

“I know that. That’s why — ”

“I’m still in school. I’m still in his class. And now I’ll have to apologize to him. I’ll have to make nice.”

“He should be sacked!”

“For what?” His eyes are wide with disbelief. “I’ve no evidence he did anything. And neither do you. I’m not a fool, Jon. People don’t just believe girls like me. Joffrey’s already made sure to tell everyone what a frigid bitch I am, and anyone who didn’t believe that certainly thinks Father dying has made me hysterical. This won’t help.”

He takes a shuddering breath. “Sansa, I’m — ”

“Don’t. Don’t say anything else. I’ve been humiliated enough.” She holds out her hand expectantly, and with a defeated sigh, he places the bag in her palm. “I’m going home,” she says. “Alone. Don’t follow me.” 

His misery is plain on his face, and she knows if she gave him the chance, he would apologize, he would do what he could to make things right. She knows he was only trying to protect her.

But a handful of partygoers are still congregated only a few paces away, staring at her, judging her, imagining they know a thing about her. Waiting for her to falling to her knees sobbing, the way she did that day in Diagon Alley. Waiting for her to show how broken she is.

She won’t do it. She walks out of the party, and she doesn’t look back.

* * *

Outside the grand front doors of Highgarden, she runs into Harry Hardyng, who’s leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette and looking bored. When he sees her, his eyebrows climb up to his hairline. “Sansa?”

She can’t imagine how she looks. Her makeup must be smudged, and she’d given up and taken off her heels coming down the third flight of stairs. She’s thrown on but hasn’t properly buttoned her coat, which had been promptly fetched by a servant who’d pretended not to see the tears in her eyes. (Sansa had slipped the woman a few galleons for her discretion.)

But it is her face that must be the real fright, because Harry startles back when he takes a good look at her. “Are you okay?”

She sniffles. “Not especially.” She watches him consideringly as he takes a long drag from his cigarette. “You’ve been to Winterfell before, haven’t you?”

He tilts his head in confusion, but he nods. 

“Do you remember it?”

“Very well.”

She takes a deep, crisp breath of the winter air, hastily wiping away whatever makeup has smeared underneath her eyes, and running a hand through her hair to smooth it oat. She tries to sound reasonable. “I am not in the mood to Floo tonight and if I am forced to use one of the portkeys I just know I’ll throw up.” She offers an unconvincing smile. “How’s your side-along apparition?”

He exhales a stream of smoke. “It’s good,” he says. “If I’m not too drunk.” Another drag of his cigarette. “I don’t think I’m too drunk.”

“Then please, if it’s not too much trouble — would you take me home?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never fear -- neither Sansa/Harry nor Jon/Margaery are even sort of happening in this fic. I just needed them both to be supremely confused going into the next part of the story.
> 
> There will, however, be more Margaery/Myrcella to come...
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments are always appreciated. :)
> 
> The graphic for this chapter can be found [here](http://noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth.tumblr.com/post/181537827233/the-seasons-of-my-love-chapter-8-new-years). It includes images of the dresses I was imagining Sansa and Margaery wearing: the middle left is Margaery's, the bottom right is Sansa's.


	9. January

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa returns to Hogwarts, where she has more than one person she has to answer to.

In the days that follow, Jon keeps his distance.

Sansa pretends not to notice his conspicuous absence, never commenting on the fact that he is already off to work by the time she shuffles downstairs for breakfast and that he doesn’t return until well after dinner. Even once he’s made it home, he is always conveniently elsewhere: racing broomsticks with Rickon and Arya, holed up in Bran’s room playing chess, taking Ghost for long walks into town. It’s impressive how easily he avoids her — but then again, he’s had years of practice doing the same with her mother.

The thought pricks her, sharper than a needle. She had foolishly hoped they’d moved past that. But can she really blame him, after the way she spoke to him that night?

_Not that I regret what I said_ , she tells herself firmly. Jon had been the one in the wrong. He’d overreacted. He’d overstepped. Every time she remembers how easily, how _thoughtlessly_ , he’d pinned Petyr Baelish to the wall, her face floods with heat. It’s embarrassing, what he did. He’d even threatened Petyr. What was it he’d said? _Touch her, and I’ll kill you myself._ She shivers, still furious.

She can only imagine the stories the Hogwarts rumor mill will spin about Jon attacking a professor and Sansa fleeing the scene. So far only Margaery has been bold enough to ask her for specifics — in a letter delivered by Rose, Margaery’s beloved big-eyed saw-whet owl, on the afternoon of New Year’s Day — but once she’s back at school, she knows there will be more questions, not least of which, of course, will be whether it’s true she left the party with Harrold Hardyng. 

Of all the stupid things she’d done that night, letting Harry Apparate her back to Winterfell while he was drunk and she was upset is near the top of the list. Putting aside how it must’ve looked (and _oh Merlin_ she hopes Myranda hasn’t got the wrong idea), it had been dangerous. She’s heard enough horror stories about splinching to know better, and it was an open secret in the Lannister household that the ragged scar across Lancel Lannister’s face was the result of Apparation gone wrong.

Fortunately, Harry had managed the side-along apparition with ease, and she’d made it home in one piece just before eleven o’clock. Nor did she find herself fending off any fumbling kisses or clumsy gropes, as she’d half-expected. He’d behaved like a perfect gentleman, leaving her at her doorstep with no more than a dimpled smiled and a “See you around, Stark.” 

Two or three years ago, she would’ve been in love with him for rescuing her. Her night would’ve been filled with fantasies of their first kiss, imagining what it would’ve been like if she leaned in close and let him show her how tenderly he could treat her. Two or three years ago, any man capable of even the barest kindness seemed like a miracle compared to Joffrey. But now, she doesn’t just want kindness. The things she wants … 

She can’t even begin to articulate the things she wants, knowing only that they will forever remain out of reach.

The night of the party, Sansa lay in bed unable to sleep, staring up at the pale ceiling, but she wasn’t thinking about Harry. She was wondering what it was about her that attracted the Joffreys and the Petyr Baelishes of the world. What weakness could they spot in her that drew them to her, that showed them how it easy it could be to get her under their thumb? 

She doesn’t know what time it was when she heard, through the night’s oppressive silence, the sound of a door closing downstairs. It was late. Midnight had long since passed, and the new year had arrived. She listened harder. Slow footsteps creaked on the stairs and thumped softly down the hallway, drawing nearer and nearer until they came to a stop outside her door. There they paused for just a moment before they moved away again, fading in the distance as Jon retreated from the family wing, back to his own lonely corridor.

It could’ve been Arya, she supposes. It could’ve. But it wasn’t.

Maybe Sansa should’ve spoken with Jon then, while her fury was still fresh, because the flavor of her frustration has changed into something she cannot quite explain. Why did he have to lose his temper like that? What right did he have? Something about the very fact of his concern twists her. If it was Robb, she might understand, but Jon — why would _Jon_ go to such lengths to protect her?

She reminds herself that he is a good man. Honorable and brave. An Auror. It is his job to protect people.

It’s not his to job to dance with them, though, or to tuck loose strands of hair behind their ears. It’s not his job to say their names so soft and warm, or to press kisses their foreheads as he asks them to trust him. It’s not his job to treat them as if they’re important, as if they’re precious.

In the daylight, Sansa forces herself to push away thoughts of Jon and Harry and Petyr, of her already-tattered reputation. She takes to sitting in her mother’s parlor with her knitting in her lap, rows and rows of lavender cashmere, the beginnings of a hat she is making for Jeyne. She stares out the window at the bright world outside, awash in silver sunlight. At times she drops a few stitches and she has to undo and redo her work more than once, but she doesn’t let it discourage her. Exchanging gifts has been her tradition with Jeyne for as long as they’ve been at Hogwarts, and Sansa won’t be the one to spoil things just because of a few stupid men at a stupid party.

But on the last day of the holiday, when there is a knock at the parlor door, Sansa’s heart leaps up to her throat despite herself. _Jon_. It must be. Come to say goodbye, come to clear the air before she leaves. 

Taking a deep breath, she sets her knitting aside carefully and stands to brush out the wrinkles in her skirt. “Come in,” she calls out, trying to sound friendly.

She won’t apologize, she _won’t_ , but nor does she wish to part on bad terms.

When the door opens, however, it is not Jon standing in the doorway — it is her mother, dressed in a long, blue skirt and an oversized jumper, looking strangely small and young as she lingers outside, waiting for permission to draw nearer.

Sansa steps closer, her heart still thumping hard even as her nervousness evaporates. “Mother.” Her brow furrows as she tries to read the meaning of her mother’s expression. “I’m sorry, I’ve completely taken over your parlor. It’s just so cozy up here,” she says lamely. “I like the view.” _I like the privacy_ , she doesn’t add.

And of course Jon would _never_ look for her here, not in her mother’s space. She doesn’t know what she was thinking.

“Nonsense,” Catelyn says, shaking her head. “You’re welcome in here whenever you wish, sweetheart. I just wanted talk to you, if that’s all right.”

The flash of panic that flares in Sansa’s chest knocks the wind out of her, and, sucking in a few deep breaths, she struggles to tamp it down. Nothing terrible has happened. She knows it hasn’t. Everyone is fine, alive, safe. Her mother almost certainly doesn’t know about the New Year’s Eve party. After all, although Catelyn’s face is far from happy, somber lines carved around her flat mouth, there’s no devastation in her eyes, and certainly no anger.

“Is everything okay?” Sansa asks after the moment of silence extends a beat too long.

“Everything’s fine, sweetheart. I wanted to tell you it’s been so good having you home. Bran and Arya too. I’ve missed you all so much.”

Catelyn attempts a smile, but it wavers from her lips within moments, and the melancholy tone of her voice, though familiar at this point, still worries Sansa.

“We’ve missed you too.” She doesn’t know how else to respond, so she crosses the room to stand before her mother, reassuring her, “We’ll come visit more often. I’m sure our professors will let us. And soon I’ll be done with school and I’ll be here as much as you need.”

But this doesn’t seem to cheer her mother. “You shouldn’t have to do that,” she says. “I know — ” Her voice grows thick and she clears her throat, her bright blue eyes lowering away from Sansa’s face. “I know that I’ve failed you.”

“What?”

“I’ve failed you, all of you children.”

Sansa shakes her head, her mouth falling open in protest. “You haven’t failed us,” she manages.

“I have.” Catelyn’s voice is hoarse — with exhaustion, with heartbreak, with self-recrimination — and the sound of it makes Sansa reach out to grip her mother’s hands in her own, holding them tight. She remembers too well how Catelyn had sounded that day Sansa had to tell her that Robb was dead, the painful scraping sound of her endless cries, and how she wouldn’t speak for days and days after. Sansa closes her eyes against the memory. “I shouldn’t have let it all fall on you. Your father would be furious with me.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Sansa — ”

She squeezes her mother’s hands hard, so that she really listens. “He _wouldn’t_. He’d only want what we all want. For you to be all right.”

She means it, too. Part of her resents her mother’s disappearance into the depths of her grief, the way she seemed to forget that four children still remained to her, four children who loved her terribly, but the bigger part of her only wants her mother back: the woman who brushed Sansa’s hair and sang to her, the one who told her bedtime stories and painted her toenails and scolded her for teasing her sister. That woman was difficult and doting, vibrant and so alive. Sansa misses her.

More than that, Sansa misses the days when she believed her mother could solve any problem, could cure an ailment; that she was magic incarnate, and nothing could go wrong as long as she was there. She misses the childish faith she once had, that it was possible to protect those you love, and to be protected by them.

“We just want to be a family again,” is what she tells her mother.

Catelyn draws a shuddering breath, barely holding back her tears, and Sansa’s feels her own eyes begin to water. “I want that too,” Catelyn says, “but I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to be a family without them. How to do any of this without your father. He was my whole life.” She chokes back a sob, burying her face in her hands. “And Robb … my boy, my first baby … ”

“I know.”

“I can’t bear it, Sansa.”

“I know.” Sansa brushes a bit of graying hair away from her mother’s face and presses a kiss to her cheek. “But you have to. We need you, Mama,” she says softly. “I need you.”

Repressing a wail, Sansa’s mother pulls her close, enveloping her in a tight embrace, and for the first time in a long time Sansa doesn’t fight her tears. Let them come. Let her mother know that she’s just as broken by all they’ve lost. That they are broken together.

And, just for a moment, wrapped in her mother’s arms, Sansa lets herself be the girl she wishes she still was, the girl who still believed that the world was good and people were kind and life was so much more than just suffering. 

When they’ve both grown quiet again, their cries subsiding into sniffles, Catelyn says, “Tell me. What do you need, baby? What can I do to help you?”

“Don’t disappear on us. You have to be here, even though it hurts. Keep trying to heal. Keep talking to the counselor at St. Mungo’s.”

She doesn’t miss her mother’s sharp intake of breath. “You know about that?” Sansa just nods. “You’ve always been such a clever girl.”

_I’m not_ , Sansa wants to say. _I’m foolish and weak and I never learn. I don’t know what to do about Joffrey or Petyr. I’ve driven Jon away. Arya hates me. Bran is bound to get in trouble trying to protect me._

At least she still has Rickon.

The thought gives Sansa pause and, leaning away again, she begins to say, “And if you’re still thinking about sending Rickon to Aunt Lysa’s … ” but Catelyn is already shaking her head.

“No, you were right about that. I saw that well enough on Christmas Eve. Rickon and Robin are very different boys, and to be honest I don’t think Lysa is very keen on the idea anymore either.”

“Good.”

Sansa snuggles deeper into her mother’s arms, allowing her tired eyes to rest briefly, until finally she asks, “What changed?” At her mother’s quizzical look, she says, “Why talk about this now? It’s been months.”

She doesn’t know what answer she expects: that she’d had a breakthrough with her counselor, or that she’d had a dream about Father and Robb, or that surviving the first Christmas without them had made her realize she was stronger than she knew. All she Sansa knows is that she doesn’t expect her mother to say, “An owl came this morning from Petyr.”

Catelyn must feel how she stiffens, because she loosens her hold on Sansa for a moment, long enough for Sansa to pull herself out of her mother’s arms. “Petyr?” she asks, hearing how strange her voice sounds but unable to prevent it.

“He told me he saw you at Olenna Tyrell’s party.” Catelyn is frowning now, brows drawn together, her lips pursed disapprovingly. “He told me you were there with Jon Snow.”

Sansa takes another step back, a hysterical bubble of laughter rising at the back of her throat. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” She knows how defensive she sounds. “Or yours.”

“We’re just trying to look out for you. Petyr said that Jon lost his temper. That the two of you argued. Petyr was afraid you might’ve been hurt. Sansa, please … I don’t trust that boy, and you shouldn’t either.”

“Jon wouldn’t hurt me,” Sansa tells her mother, hardly believing that she has to say it.

“You don’t know that.”

“Of course I do. Mother — ”

“I’m not blind. I see that you’ve come to rely on Jon these past few months, and I know that it’s my fault. I don’t know if you’re lashing out or if you’re trying to spite me — ”

“Spite you?” Sansa scoffs. “What are you _talking_ about?” She doesn’t bother to give Catelyn the chance to answer. “I’ve relied on Jon because I _can_. Because he’s the _only one_ I’ve been able to rely on since Robb died. He would never hurt me. I trust him.” 

Before she can stop herself, she adds in a biting tone, “And if you really want to look out for me, you’d better stop believing every lie Petyr bloody Baelish tells you. He’s the one you shouldn’t trust.”

“ _Sansa_.” 

Sansa turns away, unwilling to face the scandalized expression on her mother’s face. “I don’t want to have this argument with you anymore,” she says, fighting to keep her voice even. “I’m glad you’re getting better. I’m glad you’re trying. I really am. But leave Jon out of it. He’s got nothing to do with any of this.”

With that, Sansa walks out the door, leaving her knitting behind, still unfinished.

***

On the steps outside Winterfell, under a light fall of snow, Catelyn kisses her children farewell, holding each of them close for a long time. Arya squirms, playing up the part of the mortified daughter, but Bran throws his arms around her neck. For once he seems like the thirteen-year-old boy he is. Still, Sansa sees how he puts on a brave face for Rickon, whose face has grown red with the effort of not crying.

“You’ll look out for Summer for me?” Bran asks his little brother. “He gets lonely if I’m not home.” At the words, Rickon nods seriously, accepting the charge, unaware that Bran intends for the dog to take care Rickon every bit as much as the Rickon takes care of him. Sansa can’t hide her smile of affection for both of them, her sweet baby brothers.

When it is Sansa’s turn to say goodbye to her mother, Catelyn folds her in a tight hug. Finally, with unexpected ferocity, she says, “I would do _anything_ for you. For all of you. You know that, don’t you?”

Sansa nods and mumbles, “I know.”

“I mean it, Sansa.” Her mother’s blue eyes shine with a strength Sansa hasn’t seen in them in a long time. “Anything.”

Next Sansa says goodbye to Rickon, and that is hardest of all, for when she lifts him into her arms and drops kisses across his face, his facade of strength starts to crumble. “Don’t go,” he pleads. “You can’t go.”

“I have to,” she whispers, her heart breaking.

“Don’t leave me alone.”

“I’m not, sweet one. I swear I’m not. Mother will be here.” She hesitates. “Jon will be here.”

She still hasn’t spoken with him since the party, but no matter how angry he is at her, or she at him, she knows that he will not abandon Rickon. Now that she’ll be gone, she can only imagine his long work hours will shorten once more, and he’ll make his presence felt around the house.

But Rickon sticks his bottom lip out, sullen, sulking. “No, he won’t.”

“Of course he will.”

Rickon just shakes his head, and no matter how Sansa tries to reassure him that of course Jon will be there for him, he remains doubtful and unhappy. His young face, too full of loneliness, haunts her the entire trip back to Hogwarts.

***

Getting back into the swing of classes is easier than Sansa expects, perhaps because she spent so much of her holiday doing little more than reading in solitude. It is only Transfiguration that gives her any trouble. No matter how hard she tries to divorce the substance of her studies from the man teaching them, she finds herself distracted by memories that are still too fresh: the feel of his cold hand on her knee, the press of his thin lips against her mouth, the way he held her to him in Diagon Alley after her father’s death. Professor Baelish pays her little attention in class, save to occasionally call her name when her mind has obviously wandered elsewhere, and after the first few days of classes, most of the speculating about whatever happened at Margaery’s party is at least kept out of earshot of Sansa.

Almost a full week passes before Margaery herself can demand answers. She’d first tried to confront Sansa on the train ride back to Hogwarts, but Bran’s presence seemed to keep her from asking more than whether Sansa made it home all right after the party, and when, a few days later, she cornered Sansa in the girls’ toilet, the sudden appearance in the doorway of the Shireen Baratheon, Joffrey and Myrcella’s cousin, cut her line of questioning short. 

Finally Sansa admits defeat and brings Margaery back to Ravenclaw following dinner on Friday night. At the very least she knows she won’t run into Joffrey or any of his friends there.

When they reach the dormitory, Jeyne is already there, sitting cross-legged on her bed in flannel pajamas, thick woollen socks, and (adorably) the hat that Sansa finished for her on the train ride to school. She’s idly flipping through the latest issue of _BeWitched_ magazine. Sansa curses herself for not thinking about the fact that Jeyne would be around, and when Jeyne glances up and realizes that Margaery is with Sansa, her valiant effort not to look disappointed pierces Sansa to the core. “I can clear out if you want,” she offers half-heartedly.

Sansa’s friendships with Jeyne and Margaery have always been separate things, because one was born in the innocence of her childhood and the other was forged in the hell of her relationship with Joffrey, and there had been a time when she would’ve rather died than let Jeyne — who used to admire her, who used to be her shadow, her mirror, who liked all the same things she liked and used to do her hair just like Sansa — find out how pathetic she truly was. In truth, some part of Sansa still feels that way, but the look on Jeyne’s face quiets her shame. She’s touched by the enthusiasm with which Jeyne wears the knit hat, and the sweetness with which she’d presented her own gift to Sansa: a framed clipping from when Robb was interviewed in the _Daily Prophet_ as the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team who’d led his players to a record third consecutive victory. In the photograph, which now sits on her bedside table, Robb stands grinning and sweaty in his uniform, pride radiating from him as he waves across the Quidditch pitch at his teammates.

It means a lot, that Jeyne thought to do that. She is Sansa’s oldest friend, a girl who’s known her almost as long as her own sister. Whatever awkwardness may exist between them now, and whatever secrets, Sansa can’t just discard that friendship. She won’t act as if it means nothing.

“No,” Sansa says decisively, and Jeyne glances up at her with surprise. “Stay.” She cracks a smile. “You won’t believe the holiday I’ve had.”

Jeyne scoots over on the bed to make room for Sansa beside her, listening with interest to Sansa’s abridged account of the events of New Year’s Eve, and snickering openly at Margaery’s more ribald asides. When Sansa pauses, waiting for her reaction to the story, Jeyne only says, “I can’t believe you took Jon Snow to a party. You were never exactly close.”

“It’s not like I hated him,” protests Sansa. She’s not counting the days following Robb’s death. She hadn’t been thinking clearly then. “I just didn’t know him.”

“And now,” says Margaery with a waggle of her eyebrows, “you _know him_?” She’s lounging on her stomach across Sansa’s duvet, propping her chin up with her fist, and even sprawled gracelessly as she is, she is the very picture of self-assurance. It amazes Sansa.

“It’s not like that.”

“Oh? If it’s not like that then why did Jon start a row with that creep Baelish? Myrcella said you had to break them up. Then you storm off with Harry Hardyng? Very suspicious.”

“You left with Harry?” Jeyne gasps.

“You’re taking this all out of context.”

Margaery shrugs, but her expression is more shrewd than her careless gesture might suggest. “Then tell me the context. You asked me to distract Jon because you said you needed some space, and then an hour later he’s beating up a professor to defend your honor. I must be missing something.”

Yes, Sansa must admit, it sounds strange, and she still has no good excuse for why she’d needed Margaery to intervene during the party. She can hardly tell them she briefly, insanely thought about kissing Jon — not unless she never wants to hear the end of it — and nor can she explain the whole story behind the fight between Jon and Professor Baelish. Even if Margaery does think the man’s a creep, Sansa doesn’t want to force her to fight Sansa’s battles for her once again. But she has to say something.

“That’s not how it happened,” Sansa says finally. She throws a pleading look to Jeyne, but she doubts Jeyne would save her even if she could; she’s clearly highly amused by this turn of events. To Margaery, Sansa adds, “And by the way, when I asked you to distract Jon, I didn’t mean for you to kiss him.”

“Jealous?”

“Of course not! But he could’ve had a girlfriend for all you know. I even _told you_ he had a girlfriend.”

Margaery tosses her head, throwing her hair back over her shoulders, and rolls her eyes. “It was just a little mistletoe. You’re just disappointed you didn’t end up under it. Merlin knows it was everywhere. Loras hung it up all over the manor in some romantic gesture for Renly that I still don’t fully understand.” She laughs. “The real question is whether you would’ve rather ended up under the mistletoe with me or with Jon.”

Sansa loves Margaery, she does, but sometimes Margaery has a tendency to refuse to move on from a topic. It’s the same part of her that made her so persistent in her attempts to help Sansa get away from Joffrey, but when Sansa is desperate to talk about literally anything else, it can make the girl absolutely impossible to deal with.

When she glares at Margaery, though, her friend’s amused expression softens. “Fine, fine. So you didn’t kiss me and you didn’t kiss Jon and you didn’t — dear god, you didn’t kiss Baelish, did you?”

“ _No_ ,” Sansa says hotly.

Jeyne leans in. “So you kissed Harry?”

“No, I didn’t kiss Harry. I didn’t kiss anyone. And Harry’s dating Myranda Royce anyway.”

Margaery’s snort tells them what she thinks of that.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Sansa says, “but it’s hardly as exciting as you’re making it out to be. Jon and I had a misunderstanding, and I got more angry with him than he probably deserved. He’d been drinking a lot, I’d been drinking, Professor Baelish had been drinking … it was stupid. It was nothing. Then I asked Harry to help me get home, which he did. Nothing more to it.”

“If you say so.”

Annoyance flares up inside of Sansa and she replies, “Oh, and what about you?” She can’t help adding, “What happened with Myrcella?”

A dark flush rises on Margaery’s cheeks, as Jeyne’s eyes widen and she mouths _Myrcella?_ at Sansa as if she might’ve misheard. It’s obvious from the flash of Margaery’s eyes that she’s annoyed at Sansa for spilling her secret in front of Jeyne, but the set of her mouth says that she knows why Sansa did it. This is the danger of a friendship with Margaery. She is lovely as a rose, but prickly as one too, and sometimes it is hard to resist being just as thorny in return.

“Well,” Margaery says slowly, rolling onto her back to address the canopy above, “by the time she came to tell me about you running off and I confirmed you weren’t dead in a ditch somewhere, there wasn’t much left to the night.”

At that, Sansa deflates. “I’m sorry.”

But Margaery shakes her head, glancing over as her smile returns, honest and not too sharp. “I can’t pin the blame on you entirely. I was a coward.”

“No midnight kiss?”

Mouth ticking down, Margaery says, “Not with Myrcella.”

“Who’d you kiss then?” Sansa’s stomach drops. “Not Jon?”

“Honestly, what is your obsession with me kissing Jon? Besides, he left the minute he found out you’d gone with Harry. He wasn’t even there at midnight.”

“He wasn’t?”

Then where did he go that night, where did he spend all those hours between her departure from Highgarden and when she heard him return to Winterfell, very late? Maybe he’d gone to the same party Arya was at. He’d be a little old, and more than a little overdressed, but the Gryffindor Quidditch team would no doubt welcome him with a mighty cheer; he’d been as beloved to his House as Robb had been. Or maybe he’d gone to a pub, to ring in the night with strangers, drinking too much ale alone. Maybe, she thinks, maybe he went to go find his Muggle ex-girlfriend and beg for her forgiveness. He’d said that he’d loved her, after all. Maybe he still does.

This train of thought is interrupted by Jeyne’s curious whisper: “So who was it?”

“You’re going to kill me,” Margaery says, and suddenly all questions about Jon disappear. There is something about about Margaery’s expression that makes Sansa’s stomach twist, and she glances down to find she’s begun fidgeting her hands together, rubbing her thumb along the lines of her palm. 

“Who?” she whispers, forcing her hands to still.

“Joffrey.”

A long, _long_ silence passes, and all Sansa can feel is the bite of her teeth against her cheek, the sharp edge of her fingernails against her own palm. She can hardly believe what she’s heard. When she finally gathers the strength to look at Margaery, the other girl’s eyes are fixed on the canopy above, too ashamed, Sansa supposes, to face her.

How could she kiss Joffrey? How could she give him a moment of her time? Did she not care how he’d hurt Sansa? Did she not fear for herself?

“It was just a peck,” Margaery says. She sounds like she’s pleading.

“But … ” Sansa, remembering that Jeyne is here too, swallows the words she’d wanted to say. _You know what he is. You know what he’s done_. “After everything that happened between us?” she asks instead, hoping Jeyne just thinks she’s referring to get her heart broken, not her bones, not her faith in the kindness of others.

But the truth is Sansa can hardly focus on Jeyne, even as Jeyne glances back and forth between Sansa and Margaery, clearly uncomfortable. All Sansa can think about is Margaery — her friend, she thought — kissing Joffrey. Willingly kissing the boy who’s spent years torturing her. Kissing the boy who just months ago shoved her against a wall and threatened her.

“I know, Sansa, I know,” Margaery is saying, as if she knows what Sansa is thinking. As if she could ever know how bad things really were. “I wish I hadn’t done it. I’d take it back if I could.” 

Sitting up to finally face Sansa, she begins to speak quickly, her words tumbling out in a rush: “I _wanted_ to kiss Myrcella. I did. But I was afraid to ask, and then Joffrey was right there, trying to be charming, and Cersei was looking at us with so much hatred in her eyes. I just wanted to spite her. I just wanted to show her that she can’t scare me off. But it was so stupid. The stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I told him there’s no chance in hell it’ll happen again. It was an awful thing to do to you, and now I’ve probably ruined things with Myrcella too.”

Jeyne takes her hand and squeezes it — a clear declaration of her allegiance — as Sansa forces herself to try to listen to what Margaery tells her. Something about fear, and something about Cersei — yes, Cersei. _That_ she can understand. How many stupid, terrible things did she do under Cersei’s influence? The things she said about her friends, about her own family, the ways she alienated those who cared about her, she regrets them all down to her bones. 

“Can you ever forgive me?”

Sansa considers Margaery’s miserable expression, her lovely face shadowed with what seems to be genuine distress, her eyes dim and downcast, and Sansa nods, one tight nod, unable to say anything more about it. 

After a beat, she clears her throat and says, “The real question is what you’re going to do about Myrcella.” It’s a deflection, and they all know it, but Sansa doesn’t miss the grateful relief that eases the lines in Margaery’s face.

Jeyne nods eagerly and, in an obvious effort to be positive, says, “I’m sure she’ll understand if you just talk to her.”

“And what exactly am I supposed to say? ‘Darling Myrcella, I only kissed your sadistic brother because I was too much of a coward to kiss you. And because I hate your mother. Cheers.’ I’ll sound like I’ve gone mad. Even if I don’t, I don’t know that insulting her family is the best way to win her over.”

“I just don’t understand, Marge. Why didn’t you kiss her? It’s not like you to be afraid, and it seems like she really likes you. I saw how she looked at you at the party.”

With a groan, Margaery leans back on Sansa’s bed and covers her face with her hands. “She’s so sweet,” Margaery says, as if it’s new information, but then she adds, “Too sweet. I’m going to ruin her.”

Sansa almost laughs. “Ruin her? How?”

“ _How?_ Sansa, I’m the bitch who snogged your date just to make you both uncomfortable.”

“Jon wasn’t — ”

“Whatever. I’m _me_. And I like being me. But I’m not under the pretense that I’m some angel.”

“Neither is she,” Sansa says, and Margaery sucks in a breath as if offended. Before she can begin to sing Mycella’s praises, however, Sansa continues, “I only mean, she’s a human being just like the rest of us. And if being the daughter of Cersei Lannister and the sister of Joffrey Baratheon hasn’t ruined her, I’m pretty sure you won’t do it.” Sansa tries to offer Margaery an encouraging smile. “Myrcella is stronger than she seems. Don’t treat her like a child, or like she’s so fragile the slightest breeze will break her. It takes strength to stay sweet when you’re surrounded by monsters.”

At that, Margaery regards her fondly. “I suppose you’d know.”

After Margaery at last agrees that she will try to talk to Myrcella, Sansa asks about Jeyne’s holiday, which she apparently spent sunbathing and snorkeling while visiting the Muggle side of her family in Australia. A bit shyly, she tells them she met a boy while she was there, and though she hadn’t quite convinced herself to sleep with him, she did apparently spend many lazy hours on the beach with him doing almost everything else.

“Sounds wonderful,” says Margaery with a wicked grin.

“Are you going to see him again?”

“He was a Muggle.” Jeyne breathes a wistful sigh. “It’s not like he can just Apparate over to visit. Maybe this summer I could go back … ”

For the rest of the evening, Margaery and Jeyne fall into an easy conversation, describing their crushes in increasingly adoring terms. Myrcella, it seems, is a goddess, the most beautiful girl in the world, the cleverest witch at Hogwarts; meanwhile, the Australian boy, Oliver, had a perfect body and hair that curled just over his ears in the most dashing way and impossibly soft hands. “And,” Jeyne whispers conspiratorially, “I’ve never met a boy who knew how to use his _tongue_ like that,” causing Margaery to shriek in amusement, “Poole! I knew you were wilder than you looked.”

Sansa doesn’t have much to contribute to the conversation. She has no crush, no clever golden-haired goddess, no curly-haired boy with an accent. She certainly doesn’t know what boys can do with their tongues. She’s slept with Joffrey, true, but there’d been no pleasure to be found there, only pain and humiliation.

It’s strange to remember that once all she wanted was to fall in love. All she wanted was to be swept up in romance, to be cherished and adored. She’d been a fool, easy prey, and she’d walked right into Joffrey’s trap without a moment’s hesitation. She will never make the same mistake again.

Maybe she’s not made for love. Maybe it is time to be done with those dreams. Maybe that is the only way to stay safe.

***

“Come in,” Professor Baelish calls in his rasping voice, and Sansa pushes open the door and steps into his office. For a moment she debates closing the door behind her, favoring privacy over any concerns for her safety, but in the end she decides to leave it ajar, a reminder that whatever Petyr may think, they are not alone — and nor does she wish to be alone with him.

Still, she fixes a smile on her face and leans forward so that he can see the gleam of the necklace he gave her around her throat. His green-gray eyes linger on the necklace before flicking back up to her face, his expression somewhat warmer. Good. Let him think she appreciates his gift. Let him believe the feel of the chain against her skin doesn’t make her itch.

After a brief exchange of _Happy new year_ and _Are you enjoying your classes_ and _I hope you’ve been studying for your NEWTs_ — the usual bland pleasantries when you’re meeting with a professor— Sansa broaches the topic that brought her to his office in the first place. “About that night,” she begins, lowering her voice. “At the party. I hope you weren’t hurt too badly.”

His smile doesn’t waver, but his eyes are hard. “Fortunately, nothing was bruised save my ego.”

“I’m _so_ embarrassed.” With an exaggerated sigh, Sansa allows her blue eyes to widen, a look of earnestness she practiced in the mirror as girl before she begged her parents to let her spend her summer with Joffrey’s family. “I’m sorry Jon misunderstood the situation. I think he thought you were taking advantage of me.” Petyr hums noncommittally, so Sansa continues, as sweetly as she can, “But Professor — _Petyr_ — I do worry what would happen if anyone else were to misunderstand our relationship. I would hate it if you got into any trouble because of me.”

Mouth twitching into a smirk beneath his mustache, he says, “How thoughtful of you.” She can feel his gaze trailing over her once again — looking for a hint of insincerity? Or simply taking in the sight of that mockingbird pendant, a claim on her that she must pretend to tolerate? “Well, perhaps you’re right. We may have been a bit reckless on New Year’s Eve.”

_We?_

But she bites her lip and stays silent.

“I wouldn’t want to cause you any distress,” he says at last. “You leave Hogwarts soon enough, don’t you?”

“That’s right.” _And with luck I’ll never have to see you again_.

He considers her for another moment, eyebrows raised, before he begins flicking through the pages of a book on his desk. She wonders if she’s being dismissed, but then, almost off-handedly, he comments, “I hadn’t realized you and your brother were so close.”

She freezes in her seat. “You mean Jon?” She tries to laugh. “Jon’s not my brother.”

“Isn’t he? I was under the impression that he was your adopted brother.”

“Oh. I suppose he is, in a way. Father took him in after the war when there was no one else to take him. He was friends with Jon’s mother.”

“I see.”

“But we’re not. Close, I mean. Not really.” She runs her finger along the thin chain of her bracelet, tracing the edges of the snowflake charm. It’s cool between her the pad of her forefinger and her thumb. “He was always much closer with my siblings.”

“Are you certain about that? He seemed very protective of you.”

She doesn’t like the way he says the word _protective_ , as if it’s something to be ashamed of, and she doesn’t like the idea of Petyr Baelish making assumptions about the kind of person Jon is. She tries to explain, “That’s just how he is,” but his expression doesn’t change, and she adds, “Especially now that Father and Robb … ” It’s shameful, using their deaths to distract him like this, but she doesn’t want Petyr thinking about Jon, doesn’t want him causing any trouble for Jon or for her over what happened that night. She wants him to forget all about it. 

When she sniffles, he produces a handkerchief, which she accepts with a tremulous smile and uses to dab at her eyes. “Please don’t mind Jon,” she says. “He thinks he’s doing his duty, taking care of me, but I told him he doesn’t have to worry about me. Or you.”

“Ah, of course. I understand.”

“Good,” Sansa says, but of course she knows he doesn’t really. Still, she pretends not to mind his cold eyes, his thin, placid smile, the way his hand brushes her lower back as he sees her out of the office, saying only that he looks forward to seeing her in class — and though she knows she hasn’t escaped him forever, she thinks she has bought herself a reprieve from his attentions, at least for now.

***

January ends as it began, with a heavy fall of powdery snow that leaves the Hogwarts grounds all aglitter, almost dazzling on the few occasions when the sun emerges from behind the clouds. When Sansa first came to Hogwarts, eleven years old and in love with the world, she’d adored the castle in the autumn and swooned over its beauty in the spring, but it had been wintertime that had made her happiest. Winterfell was incomparable at Christmastime, but afterwards, when the holidays had passed, Hogwarts had its charms: the weather was milder, the cold less biting, and the sight of the sun setting over the snow-encrusted trees of the Forbidden Forest held a magic all its own. 

On weekend mornings in the winter, Sansa liked to stay curled up beneath her blankets late into the morning. Her mother never would’ve let her stay in bed so long, but Jeyne had no such qualms. Always an early riser, Jeyne would tiptoe down to breakfast and would even bring Sansa back a piece of fruit or a pastry, leaving it on her bedside table if Sansa still wasn’t awake. Sometimes, on a good day, Sansa could sleep until almost noon.

So it is something of a surprise when she’s shaken awake on Saturday morning while the sunlight is only just beginning to filter into the sky. Sansa squints at the window and then at Jeyne, who’s standing over her, eyes round as saucers.

“Sansa,” she squeaks. “Did you _know_?”

“Know?” She sits up, her stomach beginning to sink. “Know what?”

But Jeyne doesn’t answer, just keeps staring at her, her mouth parted in breathless horror — or excitement — or anger — or … well, Sansa’s not entirely sure. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem good.

“Jeyne, what in the world are you — ?”

Jeyne flings something onto Sansa’s lap and Sansa glances down at it dumbly. The _Daily Prophet_? She rarely reads the news, if she’s being honest, especially not since this summer, but at Jeyne’s insistence, she flips the paper over to see the front-page.

MAD MINISTER’S GRANDSON HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT  
Son of Rhaegar Targaryen found working for the Ministry, is  
believed to have been the ward of slain politician Eddard Stark

“Did you know?” Jeyne asks again, but Sansa’s not looking at her.

Beneath the headline, there is a photograph — a few years out of date, for his beard looks thinner and his hair is worn loose — but it is him, undeniably him, glancing shyly down, away from the camera, before at last his gray eyes turn up, soft and knowing, seemingly almost to look right through her. Eyes as familiar as her mother’s, as her father’s, as her own.

It is Jon Snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Writing this chapter kicked my ass and I'm still pretty unhappy with it. BUT now we've got the pieces in place for the second act of the story, and I'm excited for what's coming up!


	10. February

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newspapers are read and letters are written.

**HEAD AUROR JEOR MORMONT SAYS ‘NO COMMENT’ ABOUT SUSPENSION OF JON SNOW  
No response to concerns that secret Targaryen may be a spy**

Head Auror Jeor Mormont is facing criticism following the revelation that one of his top Aurors, Jon Snow, is the illegitimate child of the late Rhaegar Targaryen and his now-deceased mistress Lyanna Snow. Mormont told reporters on Monday afternoon that Jon Snow was taking a voluntary leave from his position in the Auror department pending an investigation, but an anonymous source within the Ministry has indicated that Snow’s suspension may have come at the command of the Minister of Magic herself. Mormont refused to comment when asked if he had any reason to suspect that Snow may have been operating as a spy for foreign governments or any remaining Targaryen loyalists. Questions about whether he was aware of Snow’s parentage at the time of his hiring were likewise met with silence.

During the historic battle between the so-called “Mad Minister” Aerys Targaryen and the dozens of witches and wizards who banded against him, Rhaegar Targaryen, the eldest son of Aerys, was conspicuously absent. Many have speculated where he may have gone, but we now have reason to believe he had absconded with his pregnant lover in order to see her safely hidden away from the fighting.

The siege at the Ministry, led by Tywin Lannister and Robert Baratheon, resulted in not only the successful assassination of the Minister but also the tragic deaths of Rhaegar’s wife Elia Martell, and their two children, Rhaenys and Aegon, who were being held hostage by Aerys and those who remained loyal to him. They were killed in the crossfire. Some theorize that the presence of Rhaegar, known by many to be a powerful spellcaster, could have turned the tide of the battle, or at least prevented the worst of the collateral damage. Hogwarts Professor Oberyn Martell, brother to Elia Martell, has previously gone on the record saying that while he primarily holds the Mad Minister and those who led the assault on the Ministry responsible for Elia’s death, he does believe that “if Rhaegar hadn’t abandoned his wife and children, they could still be alive today.”

Two months after this battle, in the days before Robert Baratheon was officially elected to the role of Minister, Rhaegar Targaryen reappeared to challenge Baratheon to the duel in which he was ultimately defeated and killed. In a recent historical volume about the rise and fall of Aerys Targaryen, the historian Aemon argues that Rhaegar initially may not have intended to challenge Robert Baratheon. “Knowing what we do of Rhaegar’s grief during his duel with Robert Baratheon, I believe that Rhaegar’s intended opponent was Tywin Lannister, whom he was heard blaming for the deaths of his only children,” Aemon told a reporter at the _Daily Prophet_. “However, Tywin Lannister would never agree to such a match, and so Robert Baratheon took up the charge.”

As the _Prophet_ revealed just days ago, however, Rhaenys and Aegon Targaryen were not in fact Rhaegar’s only children. New evidence now suggests that Rhaegar and Lyanna Snow traveled together to Spain, where they lived in seclusion as they awaited the birth of their son. Little is known about Snow. Her Hogwarts records indicate she was a proficient student, with especially high marks in Care of Magical Creatures, and prior to her tryst with Rhaegar Targaryen, she’d worked in a program for the preservation and protection of Britain’s magical forests. It is as yet unknown how she and Rhaegar met, or if Elia Martell was aware of her husband’s infidelity to her in the last months of her life.

Eyewitness testimony from the healer who oversaw Snow’s labor indicates that after Rhaegar’s defeat, Snow asked for help from an unlikely source: Eddard Stark, the right-hand man of Robert Baratheon. By the time Stark arrived at the small wizarding hospital where Snow gave birth, Lyanna Snow had already fallen gravely ill, reportedly suffering a bout of dragon pox in the aftermath of a difficult delivery. Following her death, Stark adopted the child and took him home with him to his family seat of Winterfell. While many close to the Stark family were apparently aware that Jon Snow was the child of Lyanna Snow, the secret of the boy’s paternal heritage was a more closely-guarded secret.

Not everyone has found the revelations of past few day completely unexpected, however. When asked for comment, Lysa Arryn, sister-in-law to Eddard Stark, said,“I always thought there was something wrong with that boy. He was sullen, angry, never showed an ounce of gratitude to [the Starks] for taking him in.” One of Snow’s former instructors at Hogwarts, Alliser Thorne, exclusively told the _Prophet_ , “Snow had a bad attitude. He wouldn’t show respect to his professors, always thought he knew better than us. He was a show-off, plain and simple, and more than once I told the headmaster we should’ve kicked Snow out on his arse. Then those idiots at the Ministry gave him a job.” After being asked whether he found it likely that Snow might’ve been acting as a spy within the Ministry, Thorne said, “I’d put money on it. That boy’s a spoiled, scheming brat. He’s got all the makings of a traitor, just like Rhaegar Targaryen and just like Ned Stark.”

Snow’s adoptive father, Eddard “Ned” Stark, served as Robert Baratheon’s close advisor and later his undersecretary within the Ministry. In his years within the government, he developed a reputation for honesty and was generally well-liked amongst constituents. However, following Minister Baratheon’s untimely death, rumors began to swirl of a behind-the-scenes power struggle between Stark and Cersei Lannister, Baratheon’s widow. Some even whispered that Stark attempted to illegally take Baratheon’s seat as Minister or perhaps take control of Baratheon’s vast business holdings, which had been left to his eldest son, Joffrey. Eventually Stark resigned from his role in the Ministry. Following this early retirement, reports of dealings between his family and the remaining Baratheon-Lannisters indicated that the relationship was once again amicable. In recent years Stark’s daughter has been spotted around Diagon Alley with Joffrey Baratheon, and both Jon Snow and Stark’s true son took jobs in the Cersei Lannister administration.

Nevertheless, Stark never recovered the public favor he’d once enjoyed, and new polls indicate that the recent bombshell story has further tarnished Stark’s legacy. The shocking news that Stark hid the identity of the last known Targaryen and grandson to the Mad Minister, and may have even helped him to get a high security clearance job as an Auror, has left everyone uncertain about the once-respected man’s true motives. Complicating matters is Stark’s own murder in June of last year, as well as the suspicious death of his son Robb, two months later. Both of these cases are still unsolved, but some speculate that these deaths may not have been the tragedies they seem. A source within the Auror Department who asked to remain anonymous said, “Whatever dark wizards the Starks were working for must’ve known the Ministry was on to them, so they killed them to keep them quiet.” The source added, “Who knows? It might even have been Jon himself.”

Jeor Mormont, after being asked to respond to this theory, said something that is not suitable for print. He seemed skeptical of its likelihood.

Early this morning in a meeting with the press, Minister of Magic Cersei Lannister weighed in on the controversy: “Out of respect for my late husband’s friendship with Eddard Stark, I allowed Stark’s sons to work in this Ministry, but I see now that doing so was a mistake. My husband was blinded by his affection for Mr. Stark, but I will not be so foolish. Mr. Mormont will be opening a full investigation into the treasons of Jon Snow, Robb Stark, and Eddard Stark, and I hope to see swift and thorough justice done in all of these cases. The moment any evidence arises in the investigation against Jon Snow, I will personally order his immediate arrest.”

* * *

_Dear Jon,_

_Have you gotten my last two owls? Why haven’t you replied? Arya says she hasn’t had a word from you either. I know that it must be absolute madness trying to deal with everything and I hate to think how the press must be mobbing you, but please take a moment to let us know that you’re okay. For all we know the Ministry’s thrown you into Azkaban (except we did see pictures in the paper of you leaving the Ministry just yesterday so we take that as proof you’re as yet still free)._

_At least reply to Arya, won’t you?_

_I don’t know how much of what they’re saying is true, but I know neither you nor Robb nor Father are or were ever traitors or dark wizards! We all know that. You have to know we know that._

_Write back as soon as you can. Just a line, just a word. Please._

_Your friend,  
Sansa_

*

_Dear Jon,_

_Still no word from you. Arya’s sick with how worried she is about you, and she keeps getting into fights with her classmates and friends and every single member of every single Quidditch team when they ask any impertinent questions (and of course they’re all asking impertinent questions). I thought she was going to hex poor Jeyne Poole bald the other day. She’s even angry with Podrick — as if that boy could do anything more offensive than occasionally stick his foot in his mouth. Strangely enough I think the only person she’s not complete furious with right now is me, which might be a first. But I think she’s realized I want to hear from you every bit as much as she does._

_Bran keeps reading tea leaves and trying to reassure us you’re all right, but he just says ominous things about your face being obscured in shadow. I know he’s a great seer and everything, but we’d prefer to hear how you are from you._

_I hope you’re all right. I really hope you already knew. You must’ve. No wonder you didn’t want to hear me talk about Elia Martell that evening we spent together. I wish you’d said something then. I understand why you didn’t tell ~~me~~ us, but I hated learning it from the papers. At first I didn’t even believe it. I still don’t trust half of what they’re saying. They’re trying to make Father seem like something he wasn’t. _

_Reporters have been trying to reach us, but Professor Seaworth won’t permit them on Hogwarts grounds and as headmaster I guess they have to listen to him. Unfortunately that hasn’t stopped students or even faculty from trying to interrogate us, or just talking loudly (rudely) in our vicinity. It’s as if everyone forgets their manners the moment someone comes into the public eye. Thorne especially won’t stop crowing. I never realized how terrible he was to you. I hope someone jinxes him — a good “langlock” in his direction would be a welcome change of pace!_

_None of this is interesting to you, I’m sure. If you’re even reading this. I have to assume our owls are getting to you because when they come back the letters are always gone, so I can only conclude that you’re ignoring us._

_Hoping I’m wrong,  
Sansa_

*

_Jon —_

_It’s been two weeks now. Maybe you will never speak to us again. Maybe I will never speak to you again. Some days I think you deserve it._

_I can’t believe you left Winterfell. Mother wrote to tell us. I know you probably think you were doing the ~~stupid~~ noble thing by protecting Rickon from the storm that’s raining down on you, but Rickon is just a little boy — all he knows it that everyone’s left him. I am trying  so hard to be understanding and to give you all the space you need but it’s not easy when all I can do is guess what you’re thinking and what you’re doing and why, since you won’t actually tell us._

_I’ll tell you what it’s been like for us because it hasn’t been great. The gossip hasn’t quietened down but people have gotten a little better about doing it behind our backs. Even my friends don’t ask anything anymore. It’s strange, actually. They won’t even mention you, despite the fact that your name is the paper every day now. They almost pretend you don’t exist. It’s how they are about Robb and Father, but it’s not like you’re dead, you’re just — wherever the hell you are._

_Arya’s stopped talking about you too. You know how she closes up. We’re still on speaking terms and I think she even almost likes me these days. She says I have a glare like icy death when I want to (and lately I want to), which in her world is a good thing._

_~~At least no one’s talking about what happened at the Tyrells’ party anymore.~~ _

_I am so angry with you, Jon. I doubt you’re even reading this but I am FURIOUS._

_But I’m also so sorry this is all happening. It’s unfair they’ve made you leave your job. I hate Cersei. You have no idea how much I hate her. From the reports it sounds like your boss is on your side at least, and I hope that’s true, but I’m not sure which quotes to believe. _

_Speaking of which, I’m sorry about Lysa. She’s awful. The quotes she’s giving are nothing but lies. And I am so furious with Thorne, he’s lucky he doesn’t have me in class anymore. It’s completely unprofessional, a professor commenting on one of his students like that! He should be sacked. It’s obvious he’s got a completely unfounded grudge against you. And whoever has been giving these anonymous quotes trying to suggest that you’re behind what happened to Father and Robb is just vile. No one who matters could possibly believe it. No one who knows you would even think it._

_It’s half past midnight here and I’m still sitting at my desk writing this letter while Jeyne is fast asleep. I ought to be sleeping too, but instead I dug out that book about Aerys Targaryen again. It’s still so surreal. I tried rereading all the bits about Rhaegar. People seem to think he wasn’t a bad man, not like his father, and it sounds like he tried to curb the Mad Minister’s worst impulses. There was supposedly some prophecy about him too but it’s all very vague. In pictures he is rather handsome. Almost princely. I can’t help wondering how he met your mother. I keep remembering that photograph of her in your room and how beautiful she was and how young. I am so sorry she died. It’s not fair. Nothing is fair. Even if she made mistakes with Rhaegar, she still deserved to the chance to have you in her life and for you to have her._

_I’m sorry, I know that’s probably the last thing you want to hear about._

_It’s past one now and it’s begun to snow again. It’s barely stopped in days. Just a few steps away from me Jeyne is snoring. If she wakes up she would scold me to go to sleep. She’d be right. I have a quiz tomorrow in Charms. I have essays to write. I’m also supposed to be studying for NEWTs, but somehow I keep forgetting about it. I keep forgetting I’m supposed to care about the rest of this school year and whatever is going to come after it. It all seems so stupid now._

_I don’t know why I’m even bothering to write this. You won’t read it. You won’t respond. The first four letters going unanswered really ought to have been enough of a hint._

_So this is the last one. I’ll leave you alone now._

_Sansa_

_P.S. I would say sorry about the Howler Arya sent a few days ago but I’m really not sorry at all._

* * *

_Dear Sansa,_

_You want to know if this is why I’ve been so cold to Jon, and I freely confess, yes, it is._

_I told your father that this would happen if we raised Lyanna’s son alongside you children. At some point or another, his presence would endanger you or expose you to harm. Whatever you may think, I never hated the boy and I never wished him ill, but from the moment your father told me the truth about who Jon’s father was, I knew that the rest of you would never be safe. There is still so much resentment toward the Targaryens, I feared that if word ever got out (and I knew that eventually it would get out) then you children would be made to suffer for the sins of a man who died before you were even born._

_You must understand, Aerys Targaryen was truly evil. He murdered your grandfather and your uncle and hundreds more. Anyone who opposed him was an enemy, and all enemies deserved death. Not Azkaban. Not even the Dementor’s Kiss, which seems almost a mercy compared to his preferred methods of execution. He killed his enemies in the cruelest, most painful ways. He fed them potions that burned those who drank it from the inside out. He would cast the Imperius Curse and make them walk into a pyre. Your father told me Aerys even wanted to bring dragons into the country — into London! He thought to feed his enemies to them. You cannot understand the horror of his rule. Every day I waited to hear that your father had been killed in some new and terrible manner. Every day I wondered if he would live to see Robb’s first birthday._

_Then, the moment I believed the war was over and that the whole Targaryen administration had been toppled, your father brings home a baby and tells me this is Rhaegar Targaryen’s secret son. Not only were the Targaryens not gone — Ned had brought one into our home, to sleep and nurse alongside our own chile. I was terrified. Not only because of who might find out, but because it seemed quite clear to me that the Targaryens were cursed. I’d thought it was only Aerys, but when your father told me what had happened to Lyanna Snow I knew that no Targaryen can be trusted. They bring about nothing but misfortune and evil._

_If I was unfair to Jon, then so be it. I was unfair but I was right. Because look what has happened._

_Would you like to know what I’ve been doing since the story broke? I’ve been spending my days shoring up the anti-intruder charms at Winterfell, because we’ve had reporters and photographers trying to sneak onto the grounds and into the castle. Already a few have slipped through. So far Mr. Cassel has spotted them before they make it anywhere near the house. He tells me that from the groundskeeper’s cottage he can see everything, but it’s really a matter of luck, and I don’t like relying on luck. It never holds._

_I’ve had to forbid Rickon from going outside alone to play with the dogs alone because I’m terrified someone seeking vengeance against Aerys Targaryen will decide he’s an acceptable substitute. At the very least a reporter might accost him, or trick him into telling them things he shouldn’t. Nan has been good about keeping an eye on him but it’s not her job truly. I know Rickon disobeys me and plays outside alone anyway but I don’t know what to do about it._

_He’s hardly speaking to me, now that it’s just the two of us. I won’t pretend I’m not happy that Jon left us, especially now, but I do wish Rickon didn’t take it so hard. He needs children his age to play with. Maybe I will walk into town and ask if there are any children’s groups._

_(If you’ve got a spare moment, you might write Rickon a letter or two just to ease his loneliness.)_

_At least I’ve found that all this walking the grounds and checking our security has been good for me. I didn’t know how badly I needed fresh air. It clears the mind._

_I hope that you now understand why I’ve done as I’ve done. I hope you also know that you can tell me anything, always, even if you think it’s something I don’t want to hear. I am your mother and you can always talk to me. I’m so sorry if I ever gave you reason to doubt that._

_When you reply, do let me know how your brother and sister are. Arya won’t respond to my letters and Bran is terribly vague._

_I’m also including a scarf I knitted for Arya. See that she gets it, will you? I always worry that she’s not dressing warmly enough for the winter._

_With all my love,  
Mother_

* * *

_A & B & S — _

_I only have a second to dash off this note, so forgive the handwriting. I hope Longclaw makes it to you without any trouble. Turns out the Ministry has been interfering with my mail. I’m not sure what they think they’ll find. Secret letters to people who want to avenge Aerys Targaryen, I guess, or some other proof that I am the traitor they want me to be. (At least this means someone else was the victim of Arya’s Howler. I almost feel sorry for them.)_

_I know it’s taken me unforgivably long to write back. I didn’t get your letters until yesterday, any of your letters, but that’s not a good excuse. I should’ve written even if I hadn’t heard from you. At least to tell you that I was leaving Winterfell. And to say I’m sorry for putting your family through all this. I never wanted any of this._

_I’ll try to write again when things are more settled._

_— J_

* * *

**VICTIM OR VIXEN: WHO WAS LYANNA SNOW?**  
_In an exclusive interview with_ Witch Weekly _, Howland Reed, a former classmate of Lyanna Snow and Ned Stark, wants to set the record straight about the shocking affair between the young witch and the married son of the Mad Minister._

**Witch Weekly: How well did you know Lyanna Snow?**

Howland Reed:Well, Ned [Stark] and I were great friends at Hogwarts and our fathers had been great friends as well, so we’d known each other since we were young boys. So I met Lyanna through him. She was Ned’s friend first. They were both Sorted into Gryffindor in the same year and hit it off immediately. Ned often said Lyanna was like the sister he never had.

**What can you tell us about her?**

Oh, she was beautiful and willful and terribly funny. She told stories that left us in stitches. Every now and then she got into trouble but her heart was always in the right place.

**You sound like you fancied her.**

Me? No, afraid not. Wonderful as she was, I always knew I needed someone on the quieter side. Sometimes Lyanna drove me mad with her wildness, always running off and breaking curfew and pulling me and Ned into her foolish plans. If you love a girl like Lyanna, you end up old before your time.

**What about Ned Stark? Some have suggested that Ned may have adopted Jon Snow because he believed him to be his own child.**

Absurd. Ned was married to Cat[elyn Stark] by then and there’s never been a steadier man than Ned Stark. He wouldn’t stray. Besides, he never saw Lyanna that way. She really was family to him. But you know who did fancy her something fierce? Robert Baratheon. 

**As in Robert Baratheon, former Minister of Magic and the wizard who killed Rhaegar Targaryen?**

The very same. This was at Hogwarts, mind you. He was Quidditch captain, a few years ahead of Ned and Lyanna. They were all on the team together, and Robert was always chasing after Lyanna, trying to convince her to give him a chance, but the thing about Robert was that he was usually chasing after a few other girls at the same time. Lyanna didn’t care for that. They might have gone for a drink in Hogsmeade once or twice but she never really took to him. He was always Ned’s friend more than he was hers.

**Did Robert Baratheon know that Rhaegar had been having an affair with the object of his affection? Was that the real reason behind the duel?**

I don’t think so. Don’t know how Robert could’ve known and by then I’m not sure he would’ve cared. He was engaged to Cersei Lannister. No, I think the duel was just like it’s been said. Rhaegar went a little mad when he found out about his children and he challenged the man who led the attack that killed them.

**Returning to Lyanna … It’s been reported that after Hogwarts, she took a job in magical forestry.**

That’s right, though as I understand it her job was more to do with the inhabitants of the forests. The animals, magical and mundane alike. She was a fair Herbology student, but she was a natural with magical creatures from the very first. Surprisingly so.

**Why surprising?**

Well, she was Muggleborn, wasn’t she? Never so much as heard of a thestral before Hogwarts and by third year she’s sneaking off to ride them.

**Lyanna Snow was Muggleborn?**

Sure she was. It’s no secret. Her mum died when she was small. Her da was a farmer, I think. He died when she was sixteen or seventeen, if I remember right. His heart exploded or some such Muggle ailment.

**So Rhaegar Targaryen ran off with a Muggle farmer’s daughter.**

Well, I don’t know that I’d put it like that.

**How would you put it? Tell us what you know about the relationship between Lyanna and Rhaegar.**

I know they met because of her work. She’d gone abroad to study dragons for a few months, and when she came back, Rhaegar asked to meet with her to ask about her research. He was always interested in dragons, you know. Had that in common with his father. But at that time Rhaegar was particularly interested in the Icelandic silver dragon, which is just the type Lyanna had been studying. 

Its blood supposedly has properties that can trigger prophecies even for those without the Sight. See, there was apparently a prophecy about Rhaegar that was heard at the time of his birth, and he was convinced there was a second part to it that hadn’t been delivered to him yet. He’d been searching it out for years.

**Yes, Aemon goes into some detail about this in his recent book, _Fire and Blood_. Have you had the chance to read it?**

Afraid not. I’m just going from what Lyanna told me and Ned.

**She actually told you about her affair with Rhaegar?**

It wasn’t an affair at first. They were just meeting to talk about dragons. She mentioned to me and Ned that Rhaegar had been asking about her research. She was excited that someone important might be interested in funding her work. I never would’ve thought— Well, I’m a fool now and I was a fool then. Either way, I didn’t think anything was amiss, even when I stopped hearing much from her. I was in the middle of taking over my father’s business. Ned was busy preparing to get married. Neither of us were paying enough attention.

The last time I saw Lyanna wasn’t long before she disappeared with Rhaegar. She was already pregnant then but I didn’t know that. She looked a bit different I suppose, but like I said, I’m a fool. I remember I asked her how she’d been since we last spoke and she started crying. She told me it was nothing, just that work had been tough and she was tired. It was around the anniversary of her father’s death too so I didn’t think too much about it.

Ned didn’t tell me until after she was dead that she’d come to him around that same time to tell him the truth.

**Which was?**

That she was carrying Rhaegar Targaryen’s child.

**What can you tell us about the actual events of the affair? How did their relationship shift from meetings about research to a full-blown affair with a lovechild on the way?**

A long time ago I promised Ned I would never speak of any of this, but now the secret is out and I can’t see the use in staying quiet. I’ve been hearing all the things people are saying about Lyanna lately. That she’s some kind of vixen who bewitched Rhaegar or even dosed him with love potion. I’ve heard her called words that should never be used for any lady. People are saying terrible things about this girl I know to have been good. I can’t stand it anymore. I want to tell this story because I want people to know the truth.

Lyanna was in love with Rhaegar, I do believe that to be true. She was young and eager for excitement and I’ve no doubt he was charming, but I don’t think he was in love with her at all. Nor do I think she would’ve taken up with him if she’d been thinking straight. But somehow Rhaegar had her all wrapped up in his obsession with prophecies.

See, he thought the prophecy would show him a way to stabilize the government and prevent the rebellion that was obviously brewing. The first part of the prophecy — it might be in that book you mentioned — it was all about a father and a son, so Rhaegar hoped the second part would make it clear what he was supposed to do about his father. And since the first prophecy had been tied to Rhaegar’s birth, he began to think that maybe the next part would reveal itself when he had a son. Except he already had Aegon at that point and nothing had happened. So he decided he needed another son.

**That’s a lot to take in. You’re saying that Rhaegar wanted Lyanna to have his child because of his quest for a prophecy.**

That’s what Ned told me. And that’s what Lyanna told him. By the time she was a few months pregnant and facing the reality of her situation, I don’t know how much she still believed it though.

**If all he needed was a son, why Lyanna? Why not Elia [Martell, Rhaegar’s wife]?**

I’m sure he had some excuse. Elia wasn’t in good health, if I’m remembering right, so maybe that was it, or that she’d given him a son already and there’d been no prophecy then. I know he told Lyanna it had to be her because of her connection to dragons — to the Icelandic silvers in particular. Through her, he was able to get his hands on samples of dragon blood. He even convinced her to drink it with him. Maybe it gave them the prophetic powers they’d hoped for, but if you ask me, it just made her sick. She died of dragon pox, you know.

**So, was there a prophecy associated with the birth of Jon Snow?**

No. Not that anyone knows of and certainly not according to Ned. But by then the Mad Minister and Rhaegar were both dead, so I guess Rhaegar didn’t need his prophecy anymore.

Truth be told, I don’t think there ever was a prophecy. I think Rhaegar was chasing shadows because he was too much of a coward to face down his father on his own. My own son has the Sight so believe me when I say I have respect for all manner of prophecies and visions, but if I’ve learned anything from my boy, it’s that prophecies aren’t simple. They don’t just tell you what to do. They’re not a map. And the minute you go looking for a prophecy to solve your problems or you try to fit a prophecy to mean what you want it to mean, you’re already lost.

I wish I’d known that then. I wish I could’ve told Lyanna. Rhaegar wanted her to believe in his prophecy because she was a pretty girl barely twenty years old with romantic notions who would do anything to help the man she loved save the wizarding world from chaos.

**What would you say to the reports that suggest that Lyanna intentionally kept Rhaegar away from his family during the battle at the Ministry?**

I’m not saying what she did was right, taking up with Rhaegar like she did, but I thank the fates she died without learning what had become of Elia and her children. She would’ve hated herself for it. Rhaegar’s decision to leave his family at the mercy of his father was his own careless choice and no one else’s. No wonder he went mad with grief when they died. He put some hoped-for prophecy above anything else. If he had any conscience at all he must’ve blamed himself.

**What is your impression of Jon Snow? Do you believe him to be a spy or to be otherwise working against the Lannister administration or the British wizarding government?**

I can’t say for certain, of course, as I’ve never met the lad, except once or twice when he was still in nappies. After Lyanna died, Ned and I lost touch. He’d become a father. He had Jon and his own boy, Robb. He was still a newlywed. I can hardly blame him for getting caught up in his home life, and then Baratheon tapped him for a Ministry job and he never had a spare minute again.

But I will say this. Ned Stark was a good man. I know people are trying to make it out that he did something wrong in helping Jon, but he was taking in the child of a woman who was a sister to him. It had nothing to do with the boy being a Targaryen. It had nothing to do with dark magic or the Mad Minister. Ned just loved Lyanna, and he mourned her, and he wanted to take care of her child.

I don’t know Jon Snow, but he was raised as Ned Stark’s son. A Targaryen may have sired him but I’ve always thought it’s the people we surround ourselves with that matter more than our blood status or our family names. So all I can say is that I only hope Jon Snow is every bit the man Ned was.

**You may be right. But it’s been said that bad blood will always out. It’s understandable to be wary of a Targaryen that’s been hidden in plain sight all these years, pretending to be something he isn’t.** **We can only hope the Ministry’s investigation will clear things up one way or the other**.

Indeed we can hope, but I fear we’re not in for much clarity in the coming months. I suspect things will only get hazier from here. 

**[Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]**

* * *

_Sansa —_

_I’m sorry. There. I’ve said it._

_I’m sorry for what happened on New Year’s Eve. I’m sorry for not writing to you. I’m sorry for leaving Winterfell and breaking my promise to look after Rickon. I am sorry about that last one most of all. I promise I wasn’t trying to be stupid or noble or stupidly noble, but you’re right that I didn’t want Rickon or your mother or any of the staff to be inconvenienced or frightened or hurt because of me. It was the right thing to do. They’ll be safer if I’m not there._

_I would say the past few weeks have been the worst of my life, but we both know that’s not true. Still, they’ve been strange and exhausting and I’m not sleeping, which is why this letter surely makes no sense. I should wait until morning at least but if I don’t write this now I never will._

_I’m losing my mind a little bit. More than a little bit. Just like you and Arya and everyone else I’m so bloody angry. Angry at whoever leaked the story. Angry at myself most of all. Like an idiot I tricked myself into believing no one ever had to know the truth about me, and now everyone knows. My coworkers. My friends. The bloke behind the counter at Flourish & Blotts when all I want is to pick up a pulpy novel to read to fill my newly unemployed hours. Sam and Gilly. You._

_This isn’t how I wanted ~~you~~ ANY OF YOU to find out. Well to be fair I never wanted you to find out at all. Maybe that makes me a coward, but as they say like father like son. I assume you’ve read all the latest gossip about how Rhaegar couldn’t stand to face his own father and that’s why he just let his family die and got my mother pregnant. He didn’t even actually love her. It was all for some stupid prophecy. _

_Well, the joke’s on him. Can you imagine anyone less worth a prophecy? I’m just me._

_Even when your dad told me about Rhaegar, I thought it was a joke. Not a very funny one. I ~~hoped~~ thought maybe I was his son and he just didn’t know how to tell me, but of course he sat me down and rid me of that delusion. What he told me didn’t make any sense though. It seemed so mad and unimaginable back then. The Targaryen regime was gone. There were no Targaryens left in Britain. The name was more like a bogeyman than something real. Something that had anything to do with me._

_It feels a hell of a lot more real now._

_I can’t say more right now because I still don’t trust the post. Mormont says he’s sorted out whoever was interfering but I can’t be sure. “Sorted out” might just mean he made sure it was legal. I don’t think he believes I’m a traitor or a dark wizard or the Mad Minister come again but he can’t disobey orders from the Minister of Magic herself. I am under investigation. Keep that in mind when you write back._

_Not that you have to write back. IF you write back, I should say. I understand why you wouldn’t. You have a million good reasons not to._

_But I hope you do. I know that’s selfish of me but I want to hear from you if you can bear it. I do still worry about you. I’m sorry for ruining our night at the party because it was such a good night before that. I was having a really nice time with you, Sansa. ~~I was so~~ Anyway I am sorry I ruined it. But the concern hasn’t gone away._

_If anyone is doing anything you don’t like, tell me. Please. The Ministry already thinks I’m a dark wizard so I might as well come hex all of the shits who treat you badly or put a single hand on you when you don’t want them to. I promise I can be more subtle about it than I was that night. Besides if they’re sending me to Azkaban I’d like it to be for a good reason. _

_By the way I’m back at the flat in London. The lease ends April 1. It feels so empty without Robb but every time I think about trying to find another flatmate I ~~want to be sick~~ just can’t imagine it. So I won’t be here long if I can help it, but if you need anything, here I am._

_I’m going to send this now before I think better of it._

_Jon_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! It was different but a lot of fun to write. If you didn't like it, don't worry, I don't anticipate having any more chapters like this one but it was a tidy way of moving the plot along while giving you a lot more of the backstory. Next chapter we'll jump right back into the thick of things with Sansa and Arya in full "protect the pack" mode, Jon trying to piece together the shambles of his life, and an update on the most important romance of the century: Margaery and Myrcella.
> 
> Also: Major apologies to Howland Reed, notoriously tight-lipped secret-keeper, for turning him into the biggest blabbermouth in the wizarding world. Someone had to spill the tea!


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